"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Watson, quite pale; "what an awful place!
Bears and lions! What on earth did you go there for?"
"Oh, purely for pleasure," replied the doctor, lightly. "We don"t mind such little matters out West. We try to accustom ourselves to wild beasts, and make friends of them."
"John, don"t talk such nonsense," cried his wife, quite angrily. "Mrs.
Watson, you mustn"t believe a word the doctor says. I"ve lived in Colorado nine years; and I"ve never once seen a mountain lion, or a bear either, except the stuffed ones in the shops. Don"t let the doctor frighten you."
But Dr. Hope"s wicked work was done. Mrs. Watson, quite unconvinced by these well-meant a.s.surances, sat pale and awe-struck, repeating under her breath,--
"Dreadful! What _will_ Ellen say? Bears and lions! Oh, dear me!"
"Look, look!" cried Clover, who had not listened to a word of this conversation; "did you ever see anything so lovely?" She referred to what she was looking at,--a small point of pale straw-colored rock some hundreds of feet in height, which a turn in the road had just revealed, soaring above the tops of the trees.
"I don"t see that it"s lovely at all," said Mrs. Watson, testily. "It"s unnatural, if that"s what you mean. Rocks ought not to be that color.
They never are at the East. It looks to me exactly like an enormous unripe banana standing on end."
This simile nearly "finished" the party. "It"s big enough to disagree with all the Sunday-schools in creation at once," remarked the doctor, between his shouts, while even Clover shook with laughter. Mrs. Watson felt that she had made a hit, and grew complacent again.
"See what your brother picked for me," cried Poppy, riding alongside, and exhibiting a great sheaf of columbine tied to the pommel of her saddle.
"And how do you like North Cheyenne? Isn"t it an exquisite place?"
"Perfectly lovely; I feel as if I must come here every day."
"Yes, I know; but there are so many other places out here about which you have that feeling."
"Now we will show you the other Cheyenne Canyon,--the twin of this," said Dr. Hope; "but you must prepare your mind to find it entirely different."
After rather a rough mile or two through woods, they came to a wooden shed, or shanty, at the mouth of a gorge, and here Dr. Hope drew up his horses, and helped them all out.
"Is it much of a walk?" asked Mrs. Watson.
"It is rather long and rather steep," said Mrs. Hope; "but it is lovely if you only go a little way in, and you and I will sit down the moment you feel tired, and let the others go forward."
South Cheyenne Canyon was indeed "entirely different." Instead of a green-floored, vine-hung ravine, it is a wild mountain gorge, walled with precipitous cliffs of great height; and its river--every canyon has a river--comes from a source at the top of the gorge in a series of mad leaps, forming seven waterfalls, which plunge into circular basins of rock, worn smooth by the action of the stream. These pools are curiously various in shape, and the color of the water, as it pauses a moment to rest in each before taking its next plunge, is beautiful. Little plank walks are laid along the river-side, and rude staircases for the steepest pitches. Up these the party went, leaving Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Hope far behind,--Poppy with her habit over her arm, Clover stopping every other moment to pick some new flower, Phil shying stones into the rapids as he pa.s.sed,--till the top of the topmost cascade was reached, and looking back they could see the whole wonderful way by which they had climbed, and down which the river made its turbulent rush. Clover gathered a great mat of green scarlet-berried vine like glorified cranberry, which Dr. Hope told her was the famous kinnikinnick, and was just remarking on the cool water-sounds which filled the place, when all of a sudden these sounds seemed to grow angry, the defile of precipices turned a frowning blue, and looking up they saw a great thunder-cloud gathering overhead.
"We must run," cried Dr. Hope, and down they flew, racing at full speed along the long flights of steps and the plank walks, which echoed to the sound of their flying feet. Far below they could see two fast-moving specks which they guessed to be Mrs. Hope and Mrs. Watson, hurrying to a place of shelter. Nearer and nearer came the storm, louder the growl of the thunder, and great hail-stones pattered on their heads before they gained the cabin; none too soon, for in another moment the cloud broke, and the air was full of a dizzy whirl of sleet and rain.
Others besides themselves had been surprised in the ravine, and every few minutes another and another wet figure would come flying down the path, so that the little refuge was soon full. The storm lasted half an hour, then it scattered as rapidly as it had come, the sun broke out brilliantly, and the drive home would have been delightful if it had not been for the sad fact that Mrs. Watson had left her parasol in the carriage, and it had been wet, and somewhat stained by the india-rubber blanket which had been thrown over it for protection. Her lamentations were pathetic.
"Jane Phillips gave it to me,--she was a Sampson, you know,--and I thought ever so much of it. It was at Hovey"s--We were there together, and I admired it; and she said, "Mrs. Watson, you must let me--" Six dollars was the price of it. That"s a good deal for a parasol, you know, unless it"s really a nice one; but Hovey"s things are always--I had the handle shortened a little just before I came away, too, so that it would go into my trunk; it had to be mended anyhow, so that it seemed a good--Dear, dear! and now it"s spoiled! What a pity I left it in the carriage! I shall know better another time, but this climate is so different. It never rains in this way at home. It takes a little while about it, and gives notice; and we say that there"s going to be a northeaster, or that it looks like a thunder-storm, and we put on our second-best clothes or we stay at home.
It"s a great deal nicer, I think."
"I am so sorry," said kind little Mrs. Hope. "Our storms out here do come up very suddenly. I wish I had noticed that you had left your parasol.
Well, Clover, you"ve had a chance now to see the doctor"s beautiful Colorado hail and thunder to perfection. How do you like them?"
"I like everything in Colorado, I believe," replied Clover, laughing. "I won"t even except the hail."
"She"s the girl for this part of the world," cried Dr. Hope, approvingly.
"She"d make a first-rate pioneer. We"ll keep her out here, Mary, and never let her go home. She was born to live at the West."
"Was I? It seems queer then that I should have been born to live in Burnet."
"Oh, we"ll change all that."
"I"m sure I don"t see how."
"There are ways and means," oracularly.
Mrs. Watson was so cast down by the misadventure to her parasol that she expressed no regret at not being asked to join in the picnic next day, especially as she understood that it consisted of young people. Mrs. Hope very rightly decided that a whole day out of doors, in a rough place, would give pain rather than pleasure to a person who was both so feeble and so fussy, and did not suggest her going. Clover and Phil waked up quite fresh and untired after a sound night"s sleep. There seemed no limit to what might be done and enjoyed in that inexhaustibly renovating air.
Odin"s Garden proved to be a wonderful a.s.semblage of rocky shapes rising from the gra.s.s and flowers of a lonely little plain on the far side of the mesa, four or five miles from St. Helen"s. The name of the place came probably from something suggestive in the forms of the rocks, which reminded Clover of pictures she had seen of a.s.syrian and Egyptian rock carvings. There were lion shapes and bull shapes like the rudely chiselled G.o.ds of some heathen worship; there were slender, points and obelisks three hundred feet high; and something suggesting a cat-faced deity, and queer similitudes of crocodiles and apes,--all in the strange orange and red and pale yellow formations of the region. It was a wonderful rather than a beautiful place; but the day was spent very happily under those mysterious stones, which, as the long afternoon shadows gathered over the plain, and the sky glowed with sunset crimson which seemed like a reflection from the rocks themselves, became more mysterious still. Of the merry young party which made up the picnic, seven out of nine had come to Colorado for health; but no one would have guessed it, they seemed so well and so full of the enjoyment of life. Altogether, it was a day to be marked; not with a white stone,--that would not have seemed appropriate to Colorado,--but with a red one. Clover, writing about it afterward to Elsie, felt that her descriptions to sober stay-at-homes might easily sound overdrawn and exaggerated, and wound up her letter thus:--
"Perhaps you think that I am romancing; but I am not a bit.
Every word I say is perfectly true, only I have not made the colors half bright or the things half beautiful enough. Colorado is the most beautiful place in the world. [N.B.--Clover had seen but a limited portion of the world so far.] I only wish you could all come out to observe for yourselves that I am not fibbing, though it sounds like it!"
CHAPTER VIII.
HIGH VALLEY.
Clover was putting Phil"s chamber to rights, and turning it into a sitting-room for the day, which was always her first task in the morning.
They had been at St. Helen"s nearly three weeks now, and the place had taken on a very homelike appearance. All the books and the photographs were unpacked, the washstand had vanished behind a screen made of a three-leaved clothes-frame draped with chintz, while a ruffled cover of the same gay chintz, on which bunches of crimson and pink geraniums straggled over a cream-colored ground, gave to the narrow bed the air of a respectable wide sofa.
"There! those look very nice, I think," she said, giving the last touch to a bowl full of beautiful garden roses. "How sweet they are!"
"Your young man seems rather clever about roses," remarked Phil, who, boy-like, dearly loved to tease his sister.
"My young man, as you call him, has a father with a gardener," replied Clover, calmly; "no very brilliant cleverness is required for that."
In a cordial, kindly place, like St. Helen"s, people soon make acquaintances, and Clover and Phil felt as if they already knew half the people in the town. Every one had come to see them and deluged them with flowers, and invitations to dine, to drive, to take tea. Among the rest came Mr. Thurber Wade, whom Phil was pleased to call Clover"s young man,--the son of a rich New York banker, whose ill-health had brought him to live in St. Helen"s, and who had built a handsome house on the princ.i.p.al street. This gilded youth had several times sent roses to Clover,--a fact which Phil had noticed, and upon which he was fond of commenting.
"Speaking of young men," went on Clover, "what do you suppose has become of Clarence Page? He said he should come in to see us soon; but that was ever so long ago."
"He"s a fraud, I suspect," replied Phil, lazily, from his seat in the window. He had a geometry on his knees, and was supposed to be going on with his education, but in reality he was looking at the mountains. "I suppose people are pretty busy on ranches, though," he added. "Perhaps they"re sheep-shearing."
"Oh, it isn"t a sheep ranch. Don"t you remember his saying that the cattle got very wild, and they had to ride after them? They wouldn"t ride after sheep. I hope he hasn"t forgotten about us. I was so glad to see him."
While this talk went on, Clarence was cantering down the lower end of the Ute Pa.s.s on his way to St. Helen"s. Three hours later his name was brought up to them.
"How nice!" cried Clover. "I think as he"s a relative we might let him come here, Phil. It"s so much pleasanter than the parlor."
Clarence, who had pa.s.sed the interval of waiting in noting the different varieties of cough among the sick people in the parlor, was quite of her opinion.
"How jolly you look!" was almost his first remark. "I"m glad you"ve got a little place of your own, and don"t have to sit with those poor creatures downstairs all the time."
"It is much nicer. Some of them are getting better, though."