“Oh, Verny! Look at that Indian riding across the mesa going like the West Wind!” called Judith,
“Captain! Do look at that little Navajo babe riding that broncho bareback! How does he manage to stick on?” shouted Joan,
“Quick! Turn around and see that cute little thing minding the flock of sheep!” gurgled Amy.
“Oh, dear! Just look at that coloring of the mesa! Was ever such wonderful tones made for us to use in Art?” sighed Betty.
Many more similar demands were made upon Mrs. Vernon’s attention until she wondered that her head was not twisted off with its continual turning.
After leaving Gallup the trail ran up to the high northern mesa, higher and higher, where the air was as exhilarating as the atmosphere at Acoma. Here the scouts saw as gorgeous flowers as those at the Enchanted Mesa, and twice they stopped the cars in order to add strange specimens to their collections at home. One of these odd blossoms was a sort of snake-plant, said the chauffeur. It had a long seedpod instead of a flower, and this pod was colored and marked like a diamond-backed rattler of the Rockies. The other queer plant was the pricklypear cactus with its great exotic blooms.
The cars resumed their running, and the trail resumed its upward grade. “I wonder where the jumping-off place might be?” laughed Julie, as they gazed up and up and still up the mesa.
The machines topped the grade after a time, and suddenly, quite as unexpectedly as the mountain had vanished and left the valley revealed before the amazed scouts the day of the trip to the Acoma pueblo, now the trail seemed to end on top of the world and there——!
“Well! is this another mirage where the lights and shadows play hide and seek in those ever-changing clouds of blue, lilac, rose and gold colors?” wondered Mrs. Vernon aloud.
“Look down there! That simply can’t be earth, but an ocean of purple and green waves constantly rolling over and over each other to break up—where?” exclaimed Julie.