THE Forest of Arcady, Jim," Jean called gayly from her seat on the back of her pony. She and Olive, with Ralph Merrit walking beside them, had just climbed a steep road that led across the Continental Divide into the great park of the Yellowstone, called Yellowstone by the Indians many years ago, because its river ran like melted gold between massive stone walls, shading from palest lemon to a deep orange glow.
Behind its outriders the ranch girls' caravan moved slowly upward. They had been passing through tall pine forests that shut them in to a cathedral gloom, but beyond and farther down the hill Jean had just caught sight of a grove of quaking aspen trees with the sky above them shining as bright as sunny Italy. The grove looked like a great umbrella shop with its parasols open on parade, for the trees had circular green tops growing high above the ground, and their straight, slender trunks were like white umbrella handles.
Jim cracked his whip in answer to Jean's speech and Jack waved her hat from the place next him; just behind them Ruth clutched at Frieda and Carlos to keep them from falling into the road in their efforts to see everything at once. Away to the right they could catch a faint glimpse of one of the long arms of Yellowstone Lake, and they meant to reach a hotel on its northern banks by twilight.
For the past ten days the caravan party had been moving almost steadily onward. Twice only had they stopped at small towns for mail, to buy fresh provisions and to get rid of some of the stains of travel. However, the entire party looked like a troupe of Spanish gypsies, some of them fair-haired and blue-eyed as the old Castilians, others dark as the Moors, but all with their complexions tanned to varying shades of brown from their weeks in the open air.
"Nature's Wonderland!" Jack spouted rapturously in the language of a guidebook. "Really, Ruth, the Park is even more beautiful than we dreamed, isn't it?"
But Jack ceased talking abruptly and Jim reined in his horses on a stretch of level road, while Olive and Jean slid gently down from their ponies' backs. The noise of their approach had frightened a band of almost a hundred antelopes, who were browsing in a near-by forest, and now they started off in a long, galloping run single file through the trees to a fertile green valley below.
When the deer were out of sight, Frieda flung a dimpled brown arm about Jim's neck. She wore a yellow straw bonnet with a blue ribbon on it, tied under her chin. Ruth had purchased the bonnet in one of the towns where they spent the night, for each member of the expedition was weary of crawling down from the wagon to pick up Frieda's lost hat. "Do let's rest here a few minutes, Jim," Frieda urged. "The horses have stopped, anyhow, and my legs are so tired dangling from the seat."
Ruth had let go her hold on the children for a few minutes, and without waiting for Jim's consent, by some sort of silent signal they both slipped over the wagon wheels and danced away. For hours they had been passing by every variety of beautiful wild flower, but this minute Frieda and Carlos discovered an isolated hill crowned with jagged rocks and covered with bitter-root, whose delicate blossoms made the ground look like a carpet studded with small pink stars, leading to a giant's castle in the air.
It was not yet time for luncheon, but the caravaners were always hungry, and Ruth, Jean and Olive dragged a basket of sandwiches out of the wagon, while Jim Colter and Ralph Merrit led the horses away to search for water.