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Conrad Lagrange, smiling, watched his friend, but spoke no word. Clear Creek Canyon is a deep, narrow valley, some fifteen miles in length, and approaching a mile in its greatest width; lying between the main range of the San Bernardinos and the lower ridge of the Galenas.
Following the canyon wall with her eyes as though in her mind she walked the thread-like path from Oak Knoll to the fire-break a mile from the reservoir; her gaze then traced the crest of the Galenas, resting finally upon that clump of pines high up on the point that was so clearly marked against the sky. Once, she laid aside her rod, and slipped the creel from her shoulder.
Over the note left by Aaron King, the mountaineer shook his head doubtfully. Aaron had done right to go. But for one of his inexperience, the way along the crest of the Galenas was practically impossible.
On the rounded shoulders and steep flanks of the foothills that form the sides of the canyon, the barley fields looked down upon the meadows; and, now and then, in the whirling landscape winding side canyons beautiful with live-oak and laurel, with greasewood and sage led the eye away toward the pine-fringed ridges of the Galenas while above, the higher snow-clad peaks and domes of the San Bernardinos still shone coldly against the blue.
On the pine-fringed ridge of the Galenas, among those granite cliffs and jagged peaks, the mettle of his manhood was to be tried under a strain such as few men in this commonplace work-a-day old world are-subjected to. But the young man did not know this. On the long journey across the continent, he had paid little heed to the sights that so interested his fellow passengers.
Later in the evening, Sibyl saying that she would sing Myra to sleep took her violin to the porch, outside the window; and in the dusk made soft music until the woman's troubled heart was calmed. When the moon came up from behind the Galenas, across the canyon, the girl tiptoed into the house, to bend over the sleeping woman, in tender solicitude.
Sibyl returned gently, "Thank you, Mr. Marston believe me, I do appreciate your confidence, and " she in turn hesitated "and I will keep the trust." By noon, they had reached Granite Peak in the Galenas, having come by an unmarked way, through the wild country around the head of Clear Creek Canyon.
Now and then, as the Express swung around the curves, he gained a view of the lonely, snow-piled peaks of the San Bernardinos; with old San Gorgonio, lifting above the pine-fringed ridges of the lower Galenas, shining, silvery white, against the blue. Again, on the southern side of the pass, he saw San Jacinto's crags and cliffs rising almost sheer from the right-of-way.
"We will go around the head of Clear Creek, on the divide between this canyon and the Cold Water, to some peak in the Galenas from which we can see Fairlands; and where, with the field-glass, we can pick out some point at the upper end of Galena Valley, that we can both find later." "I understand." "When I get back to Fairlands, I will make a night trip in the 'auto' to that point, with supplies.
There were no gunboats on it that day, no Monitors, or Galenas, or Maritanzas, and if you'd told us up there on Malvern Hill that the next time we climbed it ! At Westover, after supper, they told Indian stories and stories of Tarleton's troopers, and in the night we listened for the tap of Evelyn Byrd's slipper on the stair.
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