Part 16 (1/2)
So down, down, down they went. Dusk slowly gathered about them; and the white-gloved butler set the little tables, and brought in broiled chicken and grilled salmon and salad and hot rolls and peaches, and they were all very hungry. And Clover did not cry, but fell to work on her supper with an excellent appet.i.te, quite unconscious that they were speeding through another wonderful gorge without seeing one of its beauties. Then the car was detached from the train; and when she awoke next morning they were at the little station called Cimmaro, at the head of the famous Black Canyon, with three hours to spare before the train from Utah should arrive to take them back to St. Helen's.
Early as it was, the small settlement was awake. Lights glanced from the eating-house, where cooks were preparing breakfast for the ”through”
pa.s.sengers, and smokes curled from the chimneys. Close to the car was a large brick structure which seemed to be a sort of hotel for locomotives.
A number of the enormous creatures had evidently pa.s.sed the night there, and just waked up. Clover now watched their antics with great amus.e.m.e.nt from her window as their engineers ran them in and out, rubbed them down like horses, and fed them with oil and coal, while they snorted and backed and sidled a good deal as real horses do. Clover could not at all understand what all these manoeuvres were for,--they seemed only designed to show the paces of the iron steeds, and what they were good for.
”Miss Clover,” whispered a voice outside her curtains, ”I've got hold of a hand-car and a couple of men; and don't you want to take a spin down the canyon and see the view with no smoke to spoil it? Just you and me and Miss Chase. She says she'll go if you will. Hurry, and don't make a noise.
We won't wake the others.”
Of course Clover wanted to. She finished her dressing at top-speed, hurried on her hat and jacket, stole softly out to where the others awaited her, and in five minutes they were smoothly running down the gorge, over high trestle-work bridges and round sharp curves which made her draw her breath a little faster. There was no danger, the men who managed the hand-car a.s.sured them; it was a couple of hours yet before the next train came in; there was plenty of time to go three or four miles down and return.
Anything more delicious than the early morning air in the Black Canyon it would be difficult to imagine. Cool, odorous with pines and with the breath of the mountains, it was like a zestful draught of iced summer.
Close beside the track ran a wondrous river which seemed made of melted jewels, so curiously brilliant were its waters and mixed of so many hues.
Its course among the rocks was a flash of foaming rapids, broken here and there by pools of exquisite blue-green, deepening into inky-violet under the shadow of the cliffs. And such cliffs!--one, two, three thousand feet high; not deep-colored like those about St. Helen's, but of steadfast mountain hues and of magnificent forms,--b.u.t.tresses and spires; crags whose bases were lost in untrodden forests; needle-sharp pinnacles like the Swiss Aiguilles. The morning was just making its way into the canyon; and the loftier tops flashed with yellow sun, while the rest were still in cold shadow.
Breakfast was just ready when the hand-car arrived again at the upper end of the gorge, and loud were the reproaches which met the happy three as they alighted from it. Phil was particularly afflicted.
”I call it mean not to wake a fellow,” he said.
”But a fellow was _so_ sound asleep,” said Clover, ”I really hadn't the heart. I did peep in at your curtain, and if you had moved so much as a finger, _perhaps_ I should have called you; but you didn't.”
The return journey was equally fortunate, and the party reached St.
Helen's late in the evening of the second day, in what Mr. Wade called ”excellent form.” Monday brought the young men from the ranch in again; and another fortnight pa.s.sed happily, Clover's three ”leaves” being most faithfully attentive to their central point of attraction. ”Three is a good many,” as Marian Chase had said, but all girls like to be liked, and Clover did not find this, her first little experience of the kind, at all disagreeable.
The excursion to the Marshall Pa.s.s, however, had an after effect which was not so pleasant. Either the high elevation had disagreed with Phil, or he had taken a little cold; at all events, he was distinctly less well. With the lowering of his physical forces came a corresponding depression of spirits. Mrs. Watson worried him, the sick people troubled him, the sound of coughing depressed him, his appet.i.te nagged, and his sleep was broken.
Clover felt that he must have a change, and consulted Dr. Hope, who advised their going to the Ute Valley for a month.
This involved giving up their rooms at Mrs. Marsh's, which was a pity, as it was by no means certain that they would be able to get them again later. Clover regretted this; but Fate, as Fate often does, brought a compensation. Mrs. Watson had no mind whatever for the Ute Valley.
”It's a dull place, they tell me, and there's nothing to do there but ride on horseback, and as I don't ride on horseback, I really don't see what use there would be in my going,” she said to Clover. ”If I were young, and there were young men ready to ride with me all the time, it would be different; though Ellen never did care to, except with Henry of course, after they--And I really can't see that your brother's much different from what he was, though if Dr. Hope says so, naturally you--He's a queer kind of doctor, it seems to me, to send lung patients up higher than this,--which is high already, gracious knows. No; if you decide to go, I shall just move over to the Shoshone for the rest of the time that I'm here. I'm sure that Dr. Carr couldn't expect me to stay on here alone, just for the chance that you may want to come back, when as like as not, Mrs. Marsh won't be able to take you again.”
”Oh, no; I'm quite sure he wouldn't. Only I thought,” doubtfully, ”that as you've always admired Phil's room so much, you might like to secure it now that we have to go.”
”Well, yes. If you were to be here, I might. If that man who's so sick had got better, or gone away, or something, I dare say I should have settled down in his room and been comfortable enough. But he seems just about as he was when we came, so there's no use waiting; and I'd rather go to the Shoshone anyway. I always said it was a mistake that we didn't go there in the first place. It was Dr. Hope's doing, and I have not the least confidence in him. He hasn't osculated me once since I came.”
”Hasn't he?” said Clover, feeling her voice tremble, and perfectly aware of the shaking of Phil's shoulders behind her.
”No; and I don't call just putting his ear to my chest, listening. Dr.
Bangs, at home, would be ashamed to come to the house without his stethoscope. I mean to move this afternoon. I've given Mrs. Marsh notice.”
So Mrs. Watson and her belongings went to the Shoshone, and Clover packed the trunks with a lighter heart for her departure.
The last day of July found Clover and Phil settled in the Ute Park. It was a wild and beautiful valley, some hundreds of feet higher than St.
Helen's, and seemed the very home of peace. A Sunday-like quiet pervaded the place, whose stillness was never broken except by bird-songs and the rustle of the pine branches.
The sides of the valley near its opening were dotted here and there with huts and cabins belonging to parties who had fled from the heat of the plains for the summer. At the upper end stood the ranch house,--a large, rather rudely built structure,--and about it were a number of cabins and cottages, in which two, four, or six people could be accommodated. Clover and Phil were lodged in one of these. The tiny structure contained only a sitting and two sleeping rooms, and was very plain and bare. But there was a fireplace; wood was abundant, so that a cheerful blaze could be had for cool evenings; and the little piazza faced the south, and made a sheltered sitting place on windy days.
One pleasant feature of the spot was its nearness to the High Valley.