Page:A Tale from the Rainbow Land (1914).pdf/27

 pinnacles. The Menehunes crouched and gazed, forgetting human beings in the wonder and the awe; and then one of the men blew far a stream of smoke and struck the crumbling rock with his clenched fist. "I tell you what, I'll beat him out on that deal if it takes the last cent that I have."

Around the rock, back toward their cleft, the little Menehunes crept again; and there, right in the entrance to their home, there crouched a child. They drew back silently. "It is so still—it is asleep," said one.

"No," said the other, "see, its hand is not relaxed, but tense. It is not sleeping."

Then they saw that it bent forward over where a filmy rainbow arched a weaving, wavering chiffon waterfall dropping for fifty feet and then caught by the canyon wind and tossed into the air in curling spray, to spread in iridescent mist before the mottled green of trees, and vivid, changing hues of canyon walls. The child crouched breathless, gazing, gazing eyes alight, its whole form tense, its very being