However, one morning a surprise occurred. The trail had been threading a little divide which evidently separated one stream from another. A few pines were growing on it. They smelled good. When the mules had tugged the wagon over the last rise and were descending a splendid spectacle unfolded to the eyes of the Hee-Haws. Involuntarily they cheered――hooray! and again hooray! For right before them was the main trail once more, with the wagons of emigrants whitening it and with a stage dashing along. Down hastened the Hee-Haws, even the mules being glad of company. “Hooray for Cherry Creek and the diggin’s, strangers!” was the greeting, as the Hee-Haw party entered at a break in the toiling procession. “How much further, lads?” asked Captain Hi. “Whar?” “To the mountains?” “Seventy miles to the diggin’s, we hear tell. This is the head o’ Cherry Creek, hyar; and as soon as the fog lifts you’ll see what you’re looking for, I reckon.” The fog, which had cloaked the horizon since sunrise, already was thinning; and staring, the Hee-Haws waited the result. “I see them!” cried Jim, waving his battered hat. “Where, Jim?” “Yonder, straight in front.” “So do I!” yelped Billy. “There’s Long’s Peak――that big peak up at the north end. I’ve seen him from the Overland Trail. Look at the snow, will you!” “Isn’t it wonderful!” breathed the Reverend Mr. Baxter, in awed tone. And it was. Almost halting, spell-bound, they gazed. As the fog broke and melted away it exposed a mighty barrier, extending in a vast sweep from the right to the left――two hundred miles of mountains, the front range soft and purplish, the back range dazzling white with snow. The rugged plains, brushy and somewhat timbered, and lighter green where meandered Cherry Creek, reached to their very base. “Where’s Pike’s Peak?” demanded Left-over. “That lone peak at our end, stranger,” informed an emigrant. Round and bulky and snow covered, standing out by himself, like an exclamation-point completing the range, Pike’s Peak seemed the biggest peak of all. “That’s not far. ’Tisn’t more than ten miles!” declared Left-over. “Come on! Let’s go and climb it. Get out your picks, fellows! Don’t you see a kind of yellow patch? That’s gold, I bet you.” “Keep cool, young man,” warned the emigrant. “You try to walk it before night and you’ll find out how far that peak is. More than fifty miles, I reckon.” “It looks powerful cold up yon,” quavered a woman. “They do say the snow never melts off.” The trail was now much more interesting. Some of the emigrants had come out, like the Hee-Haws, over the Smoky Hill Fork Trail, and the others were from the Santa Fe Trail up the Arkansas River, to the south. A trail along the base of the mountains connected this with Smoky Hill Trail. Soon the trail by way of Republican River joined in. The triple travel on Cherry Creek Trail was now so thick that Davy again wondered where all the people were coming from.