More than once Peter had wondered why his master had so carefully explored this useless mass of upheaved rock at the end of Cragg's Ridge.

They had never seen an animal or a blade of grass in all its gray, sun-blasted sterility.

It was like a hostile thing, overhung with a half-dead, slow-beating something that was like the dying pulse of an evil thing.

And now darkness added to its mystery and its unfriendliness as Peter nosed close at his master's heels.

Up and up they picked their way, over and between ragged upheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path and that, feeling their way, partly sensing it, and always ascending toward the stars.
Roger McKay did not speak again to Peter.