Here they stopped again and, while they loitered, filled a small canteen
with the cold, clear water from the mountain's heart. Farther on, where
the pipe-line again rounds the inward curve of the wall between two
mountain spurs, they turned aside to follow the Government trail that
leads to the fire-break on the summit of the Galenas and then down into
the valley on the other side. At the gap where the Galena trail crosses
the fire-break, they again turned aside to make their leisure way along
the broad, brush-cleared break that lies in many a fold and curve and kink
like a great ribbon on the thin top of the ridge. With every step, now,
they were climbing. Midday found them standing by a huge rock at the edge
of a clump of pines on one of the higher points of the western end of the
range. Here they would have their lunch.
As they sat in the lee of the great rock, with the wind that sweeps the
mountain tops singing in the pines above their heads, they looked directly
down upon the wide Galena Valley and far across to the spurs and slopes of
the San Jacintos beyond. Sibyl's keen eyes--mountain-trained from
childhood--marked a railway train crawling down the grade from San
Gorgonio Pass toward the distant ocean.
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