Aren't we?" she concluded--turning to the
artist.
Aaron King laughed as he answered, "We certainly seem to be headed that
way. Where are we going?"
"We will start early and come back late"--she returned--"which really is
all that any one ought to know about a climb that is just for the climb.
And listen--no rod, no gun, no sketch-book. I'll fix a lunch."
"Watch out for my convict," warned the Ranger. "He must be getting mighty
hungry, by now."
Early in the morning, they set out. Crossing the canyon, they climbed the
Oak Knoll trail--down which the artist and Conrad Lagrange had been led by
the uncanny wisdom of Croesus, a few weeks before--to the pipe-line. Where
the path from below leads into the pipe-line trail, under the live-oaks,
on a shelf cut in the comparatively easy slope of the mountain's shoulder,
they paused for a look over the narrow valley that lay a thousand feet
below. Across the wide, gray, boulder-strewn wash of the mountain
torrent's way, with the gleaming thread of tumbling Clear Creek in its
center, they could see the white dots that marked the camp back of the old
orchard; and, farther up the stream, could distinguish the little opening
with the cedar thicket and the giant sycamores that marked the spot where
Sibyl was born.
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