In ten hours the midnight train would be due in Fort Garland, and as the way was all downgrade, I hoped that my strength would hold out till I caught it. But, turning my eyes from the descent to the summit, I forgot the world below, and also my poison-weakened body. Suddenly I felt and knew only the charm and the call of the summit. There are times when Nature completely commands her citizens. A splendid landscape, sunset clouds, or a rainbow on a near-by mountain's slope,--by these one may be as completely charmed and made as completely captive as were those who heard the music of Orpheus' lyre. My youthful dream had been to scale peak after peak, and from the earthly spires to see the scenic world far below and far away. All this had come true, though of many trips into the sky and cloudland, none had been up to the bold heights of Blanca. Thinking that the poisoned water might take me from the list of those who seek good tidings in the heights, I suddenly determined to reach those wintry wonder-heights while yet I had the strength. I rose from relaxation, laid down my snowshoes, and started for the summit. Blanca is a mountain with an enormous amount of material in it,--enough for a score of sizable peaks. Its battered head is nearly two thousand feet above its rugged shoulder. The sun sank slowly as I moved along a rocky skyline ridge and at last gained the summit. Beyond an infinite ocean of low, broken peaks, sank the sun. It was a wonderful sunset effect in that mountain-dotted, mountain-walled plain, the San Luis Valley. Mist-wreathed peaks rose from the plain, one side glowing in burning gold, the other bannered with black shadows. The low, ragged clouds dragged slanting shadows across the golden pale. A million slender silver threads were flung out in a measureless horizontal fan from the far-away sun. The sunset from the summit of Sierra Blanca was the grandest that I have ever seen. The prismatic brilliancy played on peak and cloud, then changed into purple, fading into misty gray, while the light of this strong mountain day slowly vanished in the infinite silence of a perfect mountain night. Then came the serious business of getting down and off the rough slope and out of the inky woods before darkness took complete possession. After intense vigilance and effort for two hours, I emerged from the forest-robed slope and started across the easy, sloping plain beneath a million stars.