“Oh, sure, I get the idea,” he said. “Atmosphere.”
“The lake doesn’t really need any build-up,” Connie declared. “Our guests will not find a more beautiful spot anywhere in New Mexico.”
As she spoke, Connie moved nearer the edge of the cliff. The opposite side of the hill top sheered off into a perpendicular wall of rock nearly sixty feet high. At the base of the declivity was a small pool of deep blue water. Beyond, the hill sloped gently away into the wooded valley.
“I’d be careful, Miss,” warned Jim Barrows uneasily. “It must be seventy feet down to that lake.”
“Not quite so far,” replied Connie, moving back from the cliff. “But it’s a long drop.”
After viewing the scene for a few minutes the three riders mounted again and rode down to a fork in the trail.
“This path leads to the cliff dwellings,” Connie explained for Jim Barrow’s benefit. “There are two trails, but for an inexperienced rider this one is best.”
“Alkali was telling me about those cliff ruins,” Jim Barrows remarked. “Your father discovered them years ago, didn’t he?”
“Yes, and they’re in an almost perfect state of preservation. Dad had some excavation done and cut away brush. If you’ve never been over we might go now. I could spend hours there.”
“I’ve seen Blakeman over this way a lot,” Barrows commented as they started down the trail. “I reckon he’s interested in such things.”