The little lost, almost hidden, trail haunted Josephine Bayley. She thought of it the next morning when she first awoke. It was still hardly daylight when she sprang from bed. “I’m going to climb it to the very top,” she thought, “for where others have been, I, too, can go, and maybe I’ll be there in time to see the sun rise.”
She quickly donned her khaki hiking-clothes, with the short skirt and bloomers; then, taking a stout, knobbed club that Mr. Enterprise Twiggly had given her for a weapon, should she meet a snake or wildcat, away she started, climbing with eager feet, and singing as soon as she was out of hearing, for the very joy of living.
When a tangle of brush impeded her progress, she thrust the stick ahead and beat the vines and bushes, and then fearlessly pushed through.
“All properly brought-up snakes are hibernating now,” she remarked to an overhanging branch that she had to stoop to pass under. “Poor little snakes,” she ruminated, “in the hearts of them they probably are as kindly-intentioned as any of us. They love to live in their wild mountain homes, and they would far rather slip away from us than hurt us, but even the truly harmless ones are always battered to death as soon as they are seen, although in gardens they are of great value, if only gardeners knew.”
A bird from somewhere sang to her, just, a joyous morning-song. “Which means that the sun is coming up and I have not reached the top of this little lost trail, and, what is more, I’m not likely to until the day is well advanced,” said the girl to herself. This because of a dense growth of pine that arose just ahead of her. Then it was that Josephine Bayley noticed that the old trail had evidently been abandoned, for crossing it was a newer one that had been recently used. With a little skip of delight, the girl-teacher turned into the new trail that led through the pine clump, and, ascending easily, to her great joy she saw one of the lower peaks just above her.
“Oh! oh!” she thought happily. “How I have longed to know what lay beyond this mountain that is in my dooryard, so to speak. I do hope it is not merely another and higher range. Well, I soon shall know.”
With feet that seemed tireless, the girl-teacher climbed the short steep bit of trail that was left, and stood at the very summit. Then, with arms outflung, she cried aloud: “Oh, the wonder of it! Now I know how Balboa must have felt when he first beheld the Pacific.”
Lake Tahoe, a great sheet of glistening blue, framed in the gray of jagged cliffs and the dark green of encircling pines, lay not many miles beyond. The sun, still near the horizon, was pouring its molten gold over the water, sky, and mountains, transforming them to celestial loveliness. With clasped hands the girl-teacher stood, gazing with her very soul in her eyes. Her hat had been thrown on a rock near by, and the breeze from the lake was tossing her curling locks back from her forehead.
Little did she dream how beautiful she looked, and still less did she dream that she was being observed by some one who thought her the loveliest creature he had ever seen.
Fifteen minutes passed before the girl became conscious of her surroundings. Not far from the summit, and near a clump of sheltering pines, she saw a camp-fire, and the coals were smoldering. Some one must be near, she thought. For one panicky moment she realized how unprotected, how very much alone, she was on that high peak, but, as no one appeared, she decided that the camper had gone his way, and she, too, turned, and, after one more glance back at the water, retraced her steps to her cabin home.