"What mountain do you call this?" I asked, trying to make diverting conversation.
"Which one?" asked the Denver gentleman.
"The one we are climbing."
"This is just one of the foothills," he declared.
"Oh," I said.
"If this is a foothill," remarked my companion, "I suppose the Adirondacks are children's sand piles."
"See how blue the plains are," said the Denver gentleman sweeping the landscape with his arm. "People compare them with the sea."
I did not wish to see how blue the plains were, but out of courtesy I looked. Then I turned my eyes away, hastily. The spacious view did not strike me in the sense of beauty, but in the pit of the stomach. In looking away from the plains, I tried to do so without noticing the town below. I did not wish to contemplate that pointed tower, again. But a terrible curiosity drew my eyes down. Yes, there was Golden, looking like a toy village. And there was the tower, pointing up at me. I could not see the lightning rod now, but I knew that it was there. Again I looked up at the peaks.
For a time we rode on in silence. I noticed that the snow on the slope beside us, and in the road, was becoming deeper now, but it did not seem to daunt our powerful machine. Up, up we went without slackening our pace.
"Look!" exclaimed the Denver gentleman after a time. "You can see Denver now, just over the top of South Table Mountain."