



Produced by Dianne Bean.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE MOUNTAINS


BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE



AUTHOR OF

"THE BLAZED TRAIL," "SILENT PLACES," "THE FOREST," ETC.





PREFACE

The author has followed a true sequence of events practically in all
particulars save in respect to the character of the Tenderfoot.  He is
in one sense fictitious; in another sense real.  He is real in that he
is the apotheosis of many tenderfeet, and that everything he does in
this narrative he has done at one time or another in the author's
experience.  He is fictitious in the sense that he is in no way to be
identified with the third member of our party in the actual trip.



CONTENTS

     I.  THE RIDGE TRAIL
    II.  ON EQUIPMENT
   III.  ON HORSES
    IV.  HOW TO GO ABOUT IT
     V.  THE COAST RANGES
    VI.  THE INFERNO
   VII.  THE FOOT-HILLS
  VIII.  THE PINES
    IX.  THE TRAIL
     X.  ON SEEING DEER
    XI.  ON TENDERFEET
   XII.  THE CANON
  XIII.  TROUT, BUCKSKIN, AND PROSPECTORS
   XIV.  ON CAMP COOKERY
    XV.  ON THE WIND AT NIGHT
   XVI.  THE VALLEY
  XVII.  THE MAIN CREST
 XVIII.  THE GIANT FOREST
   XIX.  ON COWBOYS
    XX.  THE GOLDEN TROUT
   XXI.  ON GOING OUT
  XXII.  THE LURE OF THE TRAIL




THE MOUNTAINS



I

THE RIDGE TRAIL

Six trails lead to the main ridge.  They are all good trails, so that
even the casual tourist in the little Spanish-American town on the
seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent.  In some spots they
contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop
sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more
hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose
boulders and shale.  A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more
than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall.  The major
premise stands: even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear,
however scared he may become.

Our favorite route to the main ridge was by a way called the Cold
Spring Trail.  We used to enjoy taking visitors up it, mainly because
you come on the top suddenly, without warning.  Then we collected
remarks.  Everybody, even the most stolid, said something.

You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually
ascending creek-bed of a canon, a half hour of laboring steepness in
the overarching mountain lilac and laurel.  There you came to a great
rock gateway which seemed the top of the world.  At the gateway was a
Bad Place where the ponies planted warily their little hoofs, and the
visitor played "eyes front," and besought that his mount should not
stumble.

Beyond the gateway a lush level canon into which you plunged as into a
bath; then again the laboring trail, up and always up toward the blue
California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood chaparral
into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the fine
angular shale of the upper regions.  Beyond the apparent summit you
found always other summits yet to be climbed.  And all at once, like
thrusting your shoulders out of a hatchway, you looked over the top.

Then came the remarks.  Some swore softly; some uttered appreciative
ejaculation; some shouted aloud; some gasped; one man uttered three
times the word "Oh,"--once breathlessly, Oh! once in awakening
appreciation, OH! once in wild enthusiasm, OH! Then invariably they
fell silent and looked.

For the ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of
foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, canons, little flats, and
gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below.
And from under your very feet rose, range after range, tier after tier,
rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains
to the main crest of the Coast Ranges, the blue distance, the
mightiness of California's western systems.  The eye followed them up
and up, and farther and farther, with the accumulating emotion of a
wild rush on a toboggan.  There came a point where the fact grew to be
almost too big for the appreciation, just as beyond a certain point
speed seems to become unbearable.  It left you breathless,
wonder-stricken, awed.