The Overland Riders, however, found themselves well paid for their early rising. A scene, such as they had never dreamed existed, lay before them. A sea of clouds hid the valley and the lake, white, billowy, lazy clouds that were drifting slowly under the warmth of the rising sun.
Above this white sea loomed the Four Peaks of the Apache Range, turned to red and gold by the morning sun, and, on beyond the Peaks, here and there a sapphire rock thrust its sharp point through the white billows.
“How beautiful!” murmured Elfreda Briggs.
“Beyond the power of words to express,” replied Grace Harlowe, barely above a whisper.
Anne linked arms with Grace and patted her hand, but spoke no word. Even the bare-headed, irrepressible Hippy seemed lost in silent admiration. Perhaps it was the beauty of the scene, or perhaps it was that those billowing clouds carried him back in memory to the bitter days when Lieutenant Wingate was fighting for life above just such clouds as these, high over the German lines in France.
Grace finally sat down, chin in hand, lost in wonder, her whole being filled with an exultation that she had known but once before, and then in a far different environment, when caught in a barrage at Chateau Thierry, when all the tremendous elements of the universe seemed to have joined in a mad medley. That was war, bitter, soul-racking war. This was peace, and she wondered that each should arouse in her emotions that were so much alike.
“Ahem!” began Hippy Wingate impressively, and the spell was broken. “We are now standing—”
“You are mistaken. Some of us are sitting,” corrected Emma Dean.
“On the pinnacle of the Apache Trail, the most ancient trail on our continent. Well may this be called Oldest America, for men have traversed this route since remotest time, where the silence of eternity broods over the mesas and the canyons and the peaks. And where, with this wonderful scene that comes with the dawning of the day, all the mystery of the world seems brought together. Ahem!”
A painful silence of several seconds was broken by the judicial voice of Elfreda Briggs.