[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN AND THE CAPTAIN’S MATE.] ST. NICHOLAS. VOL. XIII. AUGUST, 1886. NO. 10. [Copyright, 1886, by THE CENTURY CO.] A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HERMIT. BY ALFRED TERRY BACON. A few days ago as I was coming out of the dark mouth of a cañon, glad to be once again in the low afternoon sunshine and the free air, there rang out from the blooming plum-thicket beside me a clear, low whistle, repeated often. It was only a curlew hidden down by the brook, under the sweet-scented canopy of flowers; but the whistle came again so sweetly and boyishly that my thoughts flew far away; the tired horse fell into a walk; the reins dropped from my hand over the high Mexican saddle-horn; the mountains and the flower-covered valley seemed blotted out of sight, and instead there came up a vision of a little brown-eyed boy, who lives two thousand miles away—he seemed to be standing before me and looking up, whistling just as the curlew whistles. But there was no one near. I was alone among the mountains, twenty miles away from any man, and twice as far from any whistling lad. It was only a little vision that the curlew’s note called up for me, but I was grateful to the hidden bird; for that clear remembrance was like sight, and it was long since I had seen a human face or heard a voice. The curlew calling by the brook never knew that it was doing a kindness for a boy far away on the other side of the continent; but in jogging my memory it reminded me of a letter, lying tucked away, which had cost its writer a great deal of hard work—a letter from the brown-eyed lad who thinks the life of a backwoodsman almost as interesting as the life of Robinson Crusoe and the other wonderful men in the story-books. Perhaps there are some other boys who would like to hear how a man lives all alone in the Rocky Mountains. Near the central part of the Territory of Wyoming there is a group of mountains which belong to the Rocky Mountain system, though they are far separated from the highest range. All the mountains are higher than any of our Eastern ranges; but standing in the midst of plains that are many thousand feet above the sea, their general height does not seem great. They are very beautiful in their covering of heavy pine forests with countless tall crags and towers and sharp obelisks of natural rock rising from their summits; and in the center of the group there stands one lofty peak rising far above all its fellows. While all the mountains around were gay with spring flowers, its high head was still wrapped in snow; and now as mid-summer approaches, it is still crowned with a white wreath which will only melt away in the late summer, to return in the early autumn.