The flowers were a continual marvel. At the top of the pass, eleven thousand feet and more above the sea, their colors and their abundance were more profuse and splendid than on the lower levels. There were whole fields of pentstemons, pink, blue, royal purple, or the rare scarlet variety, like stems of asparagus strung with rubies. There were masses of gillias, and of wonderful coreopsis, enormous cream-colored stars with deep-orange centres, and deep yellow ones with scarlet centres; thickets of snowy-cupped mentzelia and of wild rose; while here and there a tall red lily burned like a little lonely flame in the green, or regiments of convolvuli waved their stately heads.
From below came now and again the tinkle of distant cow-bells. These, and the plaintive coo of mourning-doves in the branches, and the rush of the wind, which was like cool flower-scented wine, was all that broke the stillness of the high places.
"To think I'm so much nearer heaven
Than when I was a boy,"
misquoted Clover, as she sat on the rear platform of the car, with Poppy, and Thurber Wade.
"Are you sure your head doesn't ache? This elevation plays the mischief with some people. My mother has taken to her berth with ice on her temples."
"Headache! No, indeed. This air is too delicious. I feel as though I could dance all the way from here to the Black Canyon."
"You don't look as if your head ached, or anything," said Mr. Wade, staring at Clover admiringly. Her cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes full of light and exhilaration.
"Oh dear! we are beginning to go down," she cried, watching one of the beautiful peaks of the Sangre de Cristos as it dipped out of sight. "I think I could find it in my heart to cry, if it were not that to-morrow we are coming up again."
So down, down, down they went. Dusk slowly gathered about them; and the white-gloved butler set the little tables, and brought in broiled chicken and grilled salmon and salad and hot rolls and peaches, and they were all very hungry. And Clover did not cry, but fell to work on her supper with an excellent appetite, quite unconscious that they were speeding through another wonderful gorge without seeing one of its beauties. Then the car was detached from the train; and when she awoke next morning they were at the little station called Cimmaro, at the head of the famous Black Canyon, with three hours to spare before the train from Utah should arrive to take them back to St. Helen's.
Early as it was, the small settlement was awake. Lights glanced from the eating-house, where cooks were preparing breakfast for the "through" passengers, and smokes curled from the chimneys. Close to the car was a large brick structure which seemed to be a sort of hotel for locomotives. A number of the enormous creatures had evidently passed the night there, and just waked up. Clover now watched their antics with great amusement from her window as their engineers ran them in and out, rubbed them down like horses, and fed them with oil and coal, while they snorted and backed and sidled a good deal as real horses do. Clover could not at all understand what all these manœuvres were for,—they seemed only designed to show the paces of the iron steeds, and what they were good for.