Now he could seldom see more than a hundred yards in
front of him, and now he had left the stifling heat behind him for the
cool shadows which made a dim twilight of midday.
Two miles of this pleasant shade, fragrant with the spicy balsam of
the forest, and the road began to turn to the left, across the spine
of the ridge and into the deep ravine. Presently he heard the bawling
of the stream somewhere through the undergrowth below him, its gurgle
and clatter making merry music with the swish of the stirring
pine-tops. And suddenly, as he made a sharp turn, he drew in his horse
with a little exclamation of surprise.
Here the road plunged abruptly downward and across the rocky bed of
Indian Creek. Just above the crossing, so near that a passing vehicle
must be sprinkled with the spray of its headlong leaping waters, was a
waterfall flashing in white and crystal down a cliff of black rock ten
feet high. On either side the stately pine-trees, their lowest limbs
forty feet above the ground, marched in patriarchal dignity to the
edge of the stream. And above the waterfall, farther back between the
jaws of the ravine, Conniston could see the red-tiled roofing and
snow-white towers of such a house as he had never dreamed of finding
lost in the Western wilderness.
He rode on down into the stream and across. Upon the other side the
road again ran on into the canon, climbing twenty feet up a gradual
slope.
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