“I’ll stand near, Sally,” called Mrs. Murray encouragingly, and so, surrounded by reserve force, Sally faced the camera for the first time in her life.
“Won’t it be fun to show her a real picture of herself?” laughed Polly, when it was over.
“I don’t know whether it will or not,” Jean answered. “The Indians are so suspicious and superstitious that they are easily scared. She might think you were making bad medicine for her. Two years ago, some tourists took snap-shots of some Shoshone babies, and the squaws grabbed the camera, and smashed it. They said the white women were drawing out the spirits, and shutting them up in the black box to carry away with them.”
“Oooo!” cried Sue, “‘An’ the gobble’uns will get you if you don’t watch out!’”
“Now, all of you group around Miss Jean, and look happy,” ordered Isabel, so the last picture of all was the group, and a jolly, care-free lot of vacationers they looked, too.
“Let’s go down for a swim, then back to dinner, then write all our letters this afternoon,” Polly suggested, and they carried out this programme for the day.
It was worth resting up for, they all declared the next morning, when Peggie called them before five. Breakfast was ready by the time they were dressed, and a little past six, they were all in the saddle, ready for their long ride overland to the Alameda ranch. It was quite an imposing cavalcade that started out, two by two at first, and then Indian file as the road narrowed in places. This time they rode due west, along the river road, through willows and tall cottonwoods.
After about four miles, Jean led the way up a rocky defile, and they struck an irregular ridge of tableland. Here the rocks began to assume all kinds of queer, fantastic shapes, and Peggie told the names of them, as they came to each—Jumping Rabbit, Columbus, Praying Chief, Sleeping Bear, Double Towers, and so on.
“We used to take a lunch when we were little, and come here to play for a day in the summer,” Jean said. “See those rocks away over yonder? Don’t they resemble some wonderful eastern city? They look like the cliff cities of Arizona and New Mexico, too.”
“Maybe they have been, sometime,” Polly exclaimed, reining up a minute to take a good look at the strange sight. “It’s like discovering a dead petrified city, isn’t it?”