Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/269

 caught a glimpse of a horseman straddling like a beetle down the ribbon of road.

The taint of unreality hung over the whole scene. To the watcher on the rim rock this colorful bit of landscape, all green and silver streaked where white water spliced the meadows, and set in the deep box of the mountain's granite, was a painting in a shadow box. The rich vein of poetry that ran deep below the surface of Original's nature thrilled to the scene. But the practical problems of the grim business going forward did not permit themselves to be long obscured. When he had completed in every detail his survey of the valley Original turned his glass to the perpendicular wall opposite where he lay and slowly covered every inch of its surface.

There lay a secret of his own discovering and which he had shared with no man. He called it the Ladder. It was a way down into the Spout unguessed by the Spout's unlovely inhabitants. Once before he had used it; now the Ladder played a big part in the strategy of the attack.

As the man's field glass slowly crept across the face of the gray rock, tufted here and there by a stunted pine, the eye behind it was