The road now turned upward toward the railroad grade. As they reached the crest of the hill Jeff pointed to the left at the mills and the smelter buildings hanging tier on tier down the side of the mountain. Below in a depression of the hills a lake had formed, surrounded by banks of reddish earth. The whole scene was surpassing ugly, and the only dignity it possessed was lent by the masses of tall black stacks, above which hung a pall of smoke and yellow gases. Rita Cheyne gasped. "So that's the bone of contention? I thought it would be something like the New York Public Library or the Capitol at Washington! Why, Jeff, it's nothing but a lot of rusty iron sheds!"
"Yes," he drawled, "we don't go in much for architecture out here. It's what's inside those sheds that counts. We've got every known appliance for treating ore that was ever patented, with a wrinkle or two the Amalgamated hasn't."
They rode around the lake while Wray explained everything to her, and then up the hill toward the trestles and ore-dumps of the "Lone Tree" mine. Wray's struggles for a right-of-way to the markets of the country showed no reflection here. From two small holes in the mountain side cars emerged at intervals upon their small tracks and dumped their loads at the mill, from which there came a turmoil of titanic forces. Jeff offered to show his companion the workings, but she refused.
"No, I think not," she said. "It's too noisy here. I haven't finished talking to you, and I want to ride."
And so they turned their horses' heads into another trail, which descended among the rocks and scrub-oak, after a while emerging at the edge of a great sand-dune which the wind had tossed up from the valley below—a hill of sand a thousand feet high, three miles wide and six miles long, a mountain range in miniature, in which trees, rocks, and part of a mountain were obliterated. Even the Great Desert had not presented to Rita Cheyne such a scene of desolation. Their horses stopped, sniffed the breeze, and snorted. Jeff pointed into the air, where some vultures wheeled.
Mrs. Cheyne shuddered. "It looks like Paradise Lost. We're not going there?"
"No—I only wanted you to see it. There's a thousand million dollars of gold in that sandpile."
"Let it stay there. I think it's a frightfully unpleasant place. Why do you show me all these things when all I want to do is to talk?" She turned her horse's head, and they followed a slight trail between groves of aspen trees, a shimmering loveliness of transparent color. "You're not giving me much encouragement, Jeff. You didn't believe in my friendship in New York, but you're trying your best to keep me from proving it here."
"I do believe it now. Didn't I tell you so?"
"Yes, but you don't show it. What do you think my enemies in New York are saying of my disappearance? What will they say when they know I've come out here to you? Not that I care at all. Only I think that you ought to consider it."