It was pleasant riding in the old surrey, with Peanuts and Clip going at a lively pace over the road. They had to take a different route from the riding trail in order to find a way down into the gulch, but an hour’s journey brought them to the cabin where old Zed had lived and died. Through the deep gulch ran the creek, over rocks, and half-sunken trees here and there. Cottonwoods grew in the cool stretch of land between the high walls on either side of limestone, and blue shale, and sandstone. You could trace the course of the creek by the cottonwoods, and already their seeds had spread air-planes of down, and were turned into wind travelers.
As the land struck sharply into the towering palisades of rock, the pines grew thickly wherever they could find a foothold. Down in the gulch the bright sunlight never struck with full force. Both its heat and radiance were tempered by the green gloom of the spruces, and the great ferns that grew everywhere.
The door of the little low cabin was unlocked, and the girls entered it with curious feelings of respect, almost as if it had been a shrine.
There were three windows, and many shelves around the one room. A rock fireplace was built into the wall. There was an old pipe on the shelf above it, and a Bible bound in calf, the back stitched in place where it had been torn. Polly opened it, and read aloud the inscription on the fly leaf.
“Zeddidiah Reed, from his grandmother, Comfort Annabel Reed, on his twentieth birthday.”
“What a darling name,” exclaimed Isabel, “Comfort Annabel! Can’t you see her, girls, with a little lace cap on, and silk half mitts.”
“Silk half mitts. What would a pioneer’s wife be doing with silk half mitts,” said Ruth, teasingly. “That’s like the miner in Arizona, whose Boston cousin sent him fur ear muffs for a Christmas present.”
“No squabbling allowed down here,” protested Polly, seriously. “Here are all his books, girls. Wasn’t he careful of them? Here’s a pickaxe, too.”
“That’s an old-time poll pick,” said Jean, examining it. “You don’t find them any more. We’d better take it for investigations while we’re on the hunt for bones.”
“These upturned rocks that seem to stand on end,” Ruth said, when they left the cabin and started along the bed of the creek, “look like Stonehenge, or the rocks in the Garden of the Gods, don’t they, Miss Jean?”