But suddenly, as Joe was dishing out the canned peaches in the kitchen, he heard a cry from Bob.
“Hi, look—it’s getting light—oh, gee, folks—come quick!”
When Joe came into the room with what dishes Val could not carry, he found every one up from the table and crowded at the west windows. The lamplight had paled. Into the windows was pouring the last rays of the setting sun, over behind the Livingston Range, the other side of the cañon. These rays came out of a great, blue hole in the wall of clouds, and seemed to stream like a vast search-light along the under side of the cloud wrack overhead. They pierced right through the falling snow, which turned to a dancing, dazzling veil of golden crystals between the windows and the sun. And, against the hole into the west, stood up the snow-crowned pyramid of Trapper’s Peak, while, to the south, just emerging from the clouds, its great snow-fields tinged with sunset as with blood and gold, rose the beautiful cone of Heaven’s Peak, shining, mysterious, magnificent.
“Dessert—peaches,” said Val.
“Go ’way,” said Alice. “This is better than any dessert. Oh, I’m going out!”
Peaches were forgotten—everything was forgotten. Every one piled out on the west porch and watched the wonderful display. Now the low sun was shooting a great rainbow up on the under side of the cloud right over the Divide. One end of this rainbow dropped down past the steep cliff of the Divide south of the Pass, known as the Garden Wall, and ended in a patch of snow.
“Hi—Joe, let’s go down and get the pot o’ gold,” Bob called. “I can see just where it is.”
“I would, if I had on my own pants,” Joe laughed.
As if to finish off the display with a pretty touch, the snow stopped falling, so they could see plainly all the white slopes around the camp, and suddenly a deer bounded out from behind a pine thicket, circled all around below them, and disappeared at last to the north.
The sun dropped, leaving a green and pink hole in the west, enlarging every moment. The clouds were lifting. It was still cold, however, and the wind was howling. The crowd went in reluctantly, blew on their fingers, and finished their dinner.