But for any one with an eye for the grandeurs there was ample reward. Far away to the southwestward a great mountain, snow-white against the vivid blue, was lifting itself in dazzling majesty above the horizon, and on the hither side it was flanked by lesser elevations, purple or blue-black in their foresting of pine and fir. For so long as the whirling shower of cinders from the locomotive could be endured they clung and looked, and the girl would have stayed even longer if Philip, in his capacity of caretaker, had not drawn her back into the car and shut the door against the stinging downpour.
“It would only be a matter of a few minutes until you’d get your eyes full out there,” he said, in response to her protest. “Pike’s Peak won’t run away, you know; and they tell me you can see it any day and all day from Denver.”
“You don’t know what it means to flat-country people, as we are—our plantation, when we had one, was in the Yazoo delta. I thought I saw mountains as we came through Missouri day before yesterday, but they were nothing but little hills compared with that glorious thing out there. Isn’t it the finest sight you ever saw?”
Philip waited until they were back in their seat before he said: “Pretty fine—yes,” which was as far as his blood and breeding would let him agree with the superlatives.
A mocking little laugh greeted this guarded reply.
“Is that the best you can do for one of nature’s masterpieces?” she asked. Then, with more of the appalling frankness: “I wonder if your sort ever wakes up and lets itself go? I can hardly imagine it.”
“I guess I don’t know just what you mean,” said Philip; but he was smarting as if the wondering query had been the flick of a whip.
“No; you wouldn’t,” was the flippant retort. “Never mind. How much farther is it to Denver?”
Philip consulted the railroad folder with which he had supplied himself.
“We ought to be there in another hour. I suppose you’ll be glad. It’s a long journey from Mississippi.”