conduits, and then
dig little trenches, running parallel among the trees. Then they turn it
on, and the tree-roots are bathed, soaked. And out of the desert spring
such trees of laden fruit that each branch must be supported by wires!

So we ate such apples as I had never dreamed of, and waited. Joe got his
films together. The boys practiced shooting. I rested and sharpened
lead-pencils. Bob had found a way to fold his soft hat into what he
fondly called the "Jennings do," which means a plait in the crown to
shed the rain, and which turned an amiable _ensemble_ into something
savage and extremely flat on top. The Head played croquet.

And then into our complacency came, one night, a bit of tragedy.

A man staggered into the little hotel at the head of the lake, carrying
another man on his back. He had carried him for forty hours, lowering
him down, bit by bit, from that mountain highland where he had been
hurt--forty hours of superhuman effort and heart-breaking going, over
cliffs and through wilderness.

The injured man was a sheep-herder. He had cut his leg with his
wood-axe, and blood-poisoning had set in. I do not know the rest of that
story. The sheep-herder was taken to a hospital the next day, traveling
a very long way. But whether he traveled still farther, to the land of
the Great Shepherd, I do not know. Only this I do know: that this
Western country I love is full of such stories, and of such men as the
hero of this one.

At last we were ready. Some of the horses were sent by boat the day
before, for this strange lake has little or no shore-line. Granite
mountains slope stark and sheer to the water's edge, and drop from there
to frightful depths below. There are, at the upper end, no roads, no
trails or paths that border it. So the horses and all of us went by boat
to the mouth of Railroad Creek,--so called, I suppose, because the
nearest railroad is more than forty miles away,--up which led the trail
to the great unknown. All around and above us were the cliffs, towering
seven thousand feet over the lake. And beyond those cliffs lay
adventure.

For it _was_ adventure. Even Dan Devore, experienced mountaineer and
guide that he was, had only been to Cascade Pass once, and that was
sixteen years before. He had never been across the divide. "Silent
Lawrie" Lindsley, the naturalist, had been only part-way down the Agnes
Creek Valley, which we intended to follow. Only in a general way had we
any itinerary