The man on the Divide lifted his face to the stars that now in the wide-arched sky were gathering in such unnumbered multitudes to keep their sentinel watch over the world below.
The cool evening wind came whispering over the lonely land, and all the furred and winged creatures of the night stole from their dark hiding places into the gloom which is the beginning of their day.

A coyote crept stealthily past in the dark and from the mountain side below came the weird, ghostly call of its mate.

An owl drifted by on silent wings.
Night birds chirped in the chaparral.

A fox barked on the ridge above.
The shadowy form of a bat flitted here and there.

From somewhere in the distance a bull bellowed his deep-voiced challenge.
Suddenly the man on the summit of the Divide sprang to his feet and, with a gesture that had he not been so alone might have seemed affectedly dramatic, stretched out his arms in an attitude of wistful longing while his lips moved as if, again and again, he whispered a name..