The train, a special, made up of a private car and a diner, was running

on a slow order and crawled between the bluffs at a snail's pace.

Ahead, the sun was sinking into the foothills and wherever the eye

could reach to the horizon barren wastes lay riotously green under the

golden blaze. The river, swollen everywhere out of its banks, spread

in a broad and placid flood of yellow over the bottoms, and a hundred

shallow lakes studded with willowed islands marked its wandering course

to the south and east. The clear, far air of the mountains, the glory

of the gold on the June hills and the illimitable stretch of waters

below, spellbound the group on the observation platform.

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"It's a pity, too," declared Conductor O'Brien, who was acting as

mountain Baedeker, "that we're held back this way when we're covering

the prettiest stretch on the road for running. It is right along here

where you are riding that the speed records of the world have been

made. Fourteen and six-tenths miles were done in nine and a half

minutes just west of that curve about six months ago--of course it was

down hill."

Several of the party were listening. "Do you use speed recorders out

here?" asked Allen Harrison.

"How's that?"

"Do you use speed recorders?"

"Only on our slow trains," replied O'Brien. "To put speed recorders on

Paddy McGraw or Jimmie the Wind would be like timing a teal duck with

an eight-day clock. Sir?" he asked, turning to another questioner

while the laugh lingered on his side. "No; those are not really

mountains at all. Those are the foothills of the Sleepy Cat

range--west of the Spider Water. We get into that range about two

hundred miles from here--well, I say they are west of the Spider, but

for ten days it's been hard to say exactly where the Spider is. The

Spider is making us all the trouble with high water just now--and we're

coming out into the valley in about a minute," he added as the car gave

an embarrassing lurch. "The track is certainly soft, but if you'll

stay right where you are, on this side, ladies, you'll get the view of

your lives when we leave the bluffs. The valley is about nine miles

broad and it's pretty much all under water."

Beyond the curve they were taking lay a long tangent stretching like a

steel wand across a sea of yellow, and as their engine felt its way

very gingerly out upon it there rose from the slow-moving trucks of

their car the softened resonance that tells of a sounding-board of

waters.

Soon they were drawn among wooded knolls between which hurried little

rivers tossed out of the Spider flood into dry waterways and brawling

with surprised stones and foaming noisily at stubborn root and

impassive culvert. Through the trees the travellers caught passing

glimpses of shaded eddies and a wilderness of placid pools. "And

this," murmured Gertrude Brock to her sister Marie, "this is the

Spider!" O'Brien, talking to the men at her elbow, overheard.

"Hardly, Miss Brock; not yet. You haven't seen the river yet. This is

only the backwater."




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