At Craig Pass, the cayuses were stopped so that all might feast their
eyes on the little Isa Lake, frowned on by stern precipices, but smiling
up into the blue, its surface flecked with water-lilies.
"An' hyar," said Aconite, "we hev a body of water that at one end
empties into the Atlantic Ocean's tributaries, an' at the other waters
the Pacific slope."
"Which is which?" asked the Colonel.
"The east end runs into the Pacific, and the west into the Atlantic,"
replied Aconite, quite truthfully.
"What's that!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "Do yeh mean to say we've got
over on the coast by drivin' east--toward Ioway?"
"You've said 'er," said Aconite.
"I tell you," said the Hired Man, as the others began studying their
maps to clear up this geographic anomaly, "I tell you that there ain't
no way of understandin' the 'tother-end-toness of this place, except by
sayin' that the hull thing is a gigantic streak of nature."
"The most rational explanation," said the Groom, "that I've heard. Mr.
Hired Man sets us all right. Drive on, Aconite!"
Down Corkscrew Hill they volplaned, thrilled and somewhat scared by the
speed of the cayuses, which flew downward in joyful relief at the
cessation of the uphill pull to the pass. At the bottom there was a
halt to afford a glimpse of Shoshone Lake, and far off to the south the
exquisite Tetons, their summits capped with pearl. The visit to Shoshone
Lake with its gorgeous geysers was to be postponed until after they
should arrive at the thumb of Yellowstone Lake, and make camp.
An hour of steady driving succeeded. They drowsed in their seats, torpid
from the early start and the days of strenuous sight-seeing. The road
ran through a quiet forest, and there was something not unpleasant in
the fact that the curtain of trees shut off the view--until suddenly at
a turn in the highway, there burst upon their sight that most marvelous
of inland seas, Yellowstone Lake. Straight away extended its waters, for
twenty miles, to the dim shores of Elk Point, where the pines carried
the wonderful landscape upward, their gloom cutting straight across the
view, between the mirror-like sheen of the lake, to timber-line on the
azure Absarokas, standing serenely across the eastern sky, their
serrated summits picked out with snow against the blue.
A huge chalice lay the lake, reared to a height of a mile and a half
above the dusty and furrowed earth where folk plow and dig and make
their livings, the crown jewel of the continent's diadem, unutterably,
indescribably lovely, filled with crystalline dew. The tourists caught
their breaths. Aconite said nothing. For a long time they stood, until
the horses began to move backward and forward, uneasy at the unwonted
stay. The Bride was holding the Groom's hand, her eyes glistening with
tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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