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White, Stewart Edward, 1873-1946

"The Claim Jumpers"

They taught their ponies tricks.
They even went wading together, like two small children, in a pool of
Battle Creek.
Bennington was deliciously, carelessly, forgetfully happy. Only there
was Jim Fay. That individual was as much of a persecution as ever, and
he seemed to enjoy a greater intimacy with the girl than did the
Easterner. He did not see her as often as did the latter, but he
appeared to be more in her confidence. Bennington hated Jim Fay.


CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRES OF STONE

One afternoon they had pushed over back of Harney, up a very steep
little trail in a very tiny cleft-like canon, verdant and cool. All at
once the trail had stood straight on end. The ponies scrambled up
somehow, and they found themselves on a narrow open _mesa_ splashed
with green moss and matted with an aromatic covering of pine needles.
Beyond the easternmost edge of the plateau stood great spires of stone,
a dozen in all, several hundred feet high, and of solid granite. They
soared up grandly into the open blue, like so many cathedral spires,
drawing about them that air of solitude and stillness which accompanies
always the sublime in Nature.


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