"Just like the sea's roar in a conch-shell, isn't it?" whispered Anne,
as she listened rapturously.
They passed tumbling, hurrying mountain streams where the burnished
trout flashed swiftly back and forth in the clear water. They came to
an upland park where the soft whistle of quail caused Polly to lift her
rifle, but the whir of wings told of a flight. From jagged rents in the
cliffs, through which the horses passed, their hoofs ringing echoes
from the iron-veined rock, they came to sleepy hollows where the Quaker
Aspens stood ghostlike as sentinels on guard before their beautiful
Eden.
Having climbed one peak and descended it, then the next one, and so on,
and on, following the winding trail that became more difficult to find
and more dangerous to climb, Polly finally drew rein beside a tree
distinctly scarred.
"Hurrah! The blaze to the Slide," shouted she, scraping away the lichen
that covered the spot.
Glad of an excuse to jump down and stretch their limbs, the other girls
joined Polly at the tree and saw the blaze, although so old, to be
perfectly plain and easily traced.
"Four miles to Grizzly Slide!" read Polly, exultantly.
"But it must be three o'clock or more. When can we hope to get back
home?" murmured Barbara, glancing down the trail they just left.
"Too late to worry about that now," said Eleanor.
"I plan to see Grizzly Slide and then camp somewhere," said Polly.
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