"It's like a Central Park for Brobdingnags," she cried. "I feel as though Apache ought to have seven-league horseshoes. As a piece of landscape gardening it's remarkably well done, for Nature is so apt to make mistakes—only Art is unerring." She breathed deep and sighed. "Here it seems Nature and Art are one. But it's all on such a big scale. It makes me feel so tiny—I'm not sure that I like it, Jeff Wray. I don't fancy being an insect. And the mountain tops! Will they never come any nearer? We've been riding toward them for an hour, but they seem as far away as ever. I know now why it was that I liked you—because your eyes only mirrored big things—nobody can have a mountain for a friend without joining the immortal Fellowship. It makes it so easy to scorn lesser things—like bridge and teas. Imagine a mountain at an afternoon tea!"
Jeff rode beside her, answering in monosyllables. The road now climbed a wood of tall oaks, rock-pines, and spruces, through which the sunlight filtered uncertainly, dappling fern and moss with vagrant amber. Somewhere near them a stream gushed among the rocks and a breeze crooned in the boughs. Rita Cheyne stopped talking and listened for she knew not what. There was mystery here—the voice of the primeval, calling to her down the ages. She glanced at Jeff, who sat loosely on his horse, his gaze on the trail. She had believed he shared her own emotions, but she knew by the look in his eyes that his thoughts were elsewhere. She spoke so suddenly that he looked up, startled.
"Why don't you say something? This place makes me think about Time and Death—the two things I most abhor. Come, let's get out of here."
Apache sprang forward up the trail at the bidding of his mistress, whose small heels pressed his flanks, again and again, as she urged him on and out into the afternoon sunlight beyond, while Jeff thundered after. He caught her at the top of a sand-ridge half a mile away, where they pulled their horses down to a walk.
"What was the matter?" said Jeff. "You rode as if the Devil was after you."
"Oh, no—I'm not afraid of the Devil. It's the mystery of the Infinite. That wood—why don't the dead oak-branches fall? They look like gibbets. Ugh!" She shuddered and laughed. "Didn't you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"Spooky."
"No. I camped there once when I was prospecting. That stream you jumped was Dead Man's Creek."
"He must be there yet, the dead man. It was like a tomb. Who was he?"