There were turns-in where a continuance straight ahead would require an airship or a coroner; again turns-out where the direct line would telescope you against the state of California.These we could make out by straining our eyes.The horses plunged and snorted; the buckboard leaped.Fire flashed from the impact of steel against rock, momentarily blinding us to what we should see.Always we descended into the velvet blackness of the abyss, the canon walls rising steadily above us shutting out even the dim illumination of the stars.From time to time our driver, desperately scared, jerked out cheering bits of information.
"My eyes ain't what they was.For the Lord's sake keep a-lookin', boys.""That nigh hoss is deef.There don't seem to be no use saying WHOA to her.""Them brakes don't hold fer sour peanuts.I been figgerin' on tackin' on a new shoe for a week.""I never was over this road but onct, and then Iwas headed th' other way.I was driving of a cor??e."Then, after two hours of it, BING! BANG! SMASH!
our tongue collided with a sheer black wall, no blacker than the atmosphere before it.The trail here took a sharp V turn to the left.We had left the face of the precipice and henceforward would descend the bed of the canon.Fortunately our collision had done damage to nothing but our nerves, so we proceeded to do so.
The walls of the crevice rose thousands of feet above us.They seemed to close together, like the sides of a tent, to leave only a narrow pale lucent strip of sky.The trail was quite invisible, and even the sense of its existence was lost when we traversed groves of trees.One of us had to run ahead of the horses, determining its general direction, locating the sharper turns.The rest depended on the instinct of the horses and pure luck.
It was pleasant in the cool of night thus to run down through the blackness, shouting aloud to guide our followers, swinging to the slope, bathed to the soul in mysteries of which we had no time to take cognizance.
By and by we saw a little spark far ahead of us like a star.The smell of fresh wood smoke and stale damp fire came to our nostrils.We gained the star and found it to be a log smouldering; and up the hill other stars red as blood.So we knew that we had crossed the zone of an almost extinct forest fire, and looked on the scattered camp-fires of an army of destruction.
The moon rose.We knew it by touches of white light on peaks infinitely far above us; not at all by the relieving of the heavy velvet blackness in which we moved.After a time, I, running ahead in my turn, became aware of the deep breathing of animals.
I stopped short and called a warning.Immediately a voice answered me.
"Come on, straight ahead.They're not on the road."When within five feet I made out the huge freight wagons in which were lying the teamsters, and very dimly the big freight mules standing tethered to the wheels.
"It's a dark night, friend, and you're out late.""A dark night," I agreed, and plunged on.Behind me rattled and banged the abused buckboard, snorted the half-wild broncos, groaned the unrepaired brake, softly cursed my companions.
Then at once the abrupt descent ceased.We glided out to the silvered flat, above which sailed the moon.
The hour was seen to be half past one.We had missed our train.Nothing was visible of human habitations.The land was frosted with the moonlight, enchanted by it, etherealized.Behind us, huge and formidable, loomed the black mass of the range we had descended.Before us, thin as smoke in the magic lucence that flooded the world, rose other mountains, very great, lofty as the sky.We could not understand them.The descent we had just accomplished should have landed us on a level plain in which lay our town.But here we found ourselves in a pocket valley entirely surrounded by mountain ranges through which there seemed to be no pass less than five or six thousand feet in height.
We reined in the horses to figure it out.
"I don't see how it can be," said I."We've certainly come far enough.It would take us four hours at the very least to cross that range, even if the railroad should happen to be on the other side of it.""I been through here only once," repeated the driver,--"going the other way.--Then I drew a corpse." He spat, and added as an afterthought, "BEAU-ti-ful Cal-if-or-nia!"We stared at the mountains that hemmed us in.
They rose above us sheer and forbidding.In the bright moonlight plainly were to be descried the brush of the foothills, the timber, the fissures, the canons, the granites, and the everlasting snows.
Almost we thought to make out a thread of a waterfall high up where the clouds would be if the night had not been clear.
"We got off the trail somewhere," hazarded the Tenderfoot.
"Well, we're on a road, anyway," I pointed out.
"It's bound to go somewhere.We might as well give up the railroad and find a place to turn-in.""It can't be far,' encouraged the Tenderfoot;"this valley can't be more than a few miles across.""Gi dap!" remarked the driver.
We moved forward down the white wagon trail approaching the mountains.And then we were witnesses of the most marvelous transformation.For as we neared them, those impregnable mountains, as though panic-stricken by our advance, shrunk back, dissolved, dwindled, went to pieces.Where had towered ten-thousand-foot peaks, perfect in the regular succession from timber to snow, now were little flat hills on which grew tiny bushes of sage.Apassage opened between them.In a hundred yards we had gained the open country, leaving behind us the mighty but unreal necromancies of the moon.
Before us gleamed red and green lights.The mass of houses showed half distinguishable.A feeble glimmer illuminated part of a white sign above the depot.That which remained invisible was evidently the name of the town.That which was revealed was the supplementary information which the Southern Pacific furnishes to its patrons.It read: "Elevation 482 feet." We were definitely out of the mountains.
