CHAPTER XXXI
HITTING A HIGH SPOT
An enthusiastic young millionaire, the son of a pioneer, determined that my companion and I ought to see the mountain parks.
It was winter, and for reasons all too plainly visible from Denver, no automobiles had attempted the ascent since fall, for the mountain barrier, rearing itself majestically to the westward, glittered appallingly with ice and snow.
"We can have a try at it, anyway," said our friend.
So, presently, in furs, and surrounded by lunch baskets and thermos bottles, we set out for the mountains in his large six-cylinder machine.
Emerging from the city, and taking the macadamized road which leads to Golden, we had our first uninterrupted view of the full sweep of that serrated mountain wall, visible for almost a hundred miles north of Denver, and a hundred south; a solid, stupendous line, flashing as though the precious minerals had been coaxed out to coruscate in the warm surface sunshine.
There was something operatic in that vast and splendid spectacle. I felt that the mountains and the sky formed the back drop in a continental theater, the stage of which is made up of thousands of square miles of plains.
Striking a pleasant pace we sped toward the barrier as though meaning to dash ourselves against it; for it seemed very near, and our car was like some great moth fascinated by the flash of ice and snow. However, as is usual where the air is clear and the altitude great, the eye is deceived as to distances in Colorado, and the foothills, which appear to be not more than three or four miles distant from Denver, are in reality a dozen miles away.
Denver has many stock stories to illustrate that point. It is related that strangers sometimes start to walk to the mountains before breakfast, and the tale is told of one man who, having walked for hours, and thus discovered the illusory effect of the clear mountain air, was found undressing by a four-foot irrigation ditch, preparatory to swimming it, having concluded that, though it looked narrow, it was, nevertheless in reality a river.