"I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and naturally they make it the shortest way."
For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile they emerged on a plateau.
Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon.
"There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this."
Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted. "We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering spectacle. This is Dante."
"Indeed it is," he assented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the 'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood till I nearly froze, looking—but I thought after that I could chart the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all night, I should have a camp-fire; but it wouldn't do, and before you get cold we must start back.
"See," he pointed, far down on the left. "Can you make out that speck of light? It is the headlight of a freight train crawling up the range from Sleepy Cat. When the weather is right you can see the white head of Sleepy Cat Mountain from this spot. That train will wind around in sight of this knob for an hour, climbing to the mining camps."
Doctor Lanning called to Marie. Gertrude stood with Glover.
"Is that the desert of the Spanish Sinks?" she asked, looking into the stream of the moon.
"Yes."