The plateau was like an English park, ringed round with the close belt of pine forest. Great trees, singly and in clusters, rose here and there from a sward of emerald green, and through it ran a bright stream, entering from the south, and after curving by the east, fell away to the western edge of the plateau over a shelf of rock. Where the stream entered it fell from another great rock, making a waterfall sufficiently high that its spray took rainbow colours where the sunlight struck it, and fell into a great deep pool, seemingly cut by Nature’s forces from the solid rock. In the centre of the plateau was a great circular hedge of prickly cactus and bear-thorn, inclosing the house in a garden of some two acres in extent. The house was small, and built solidly of logs, with a veranda all round it, and many creepers climbed over it. Right in front of its northern aspect grew a giant stone-pine, which towered up more than a hundred feet without a break, and whose wide-spreading branches threw a flickering shadow on the sward as its very height made it tremulous.
Esse was speechless, and clasped her mother’s arm tightly, and then began to thump her shoulders, as had been her habit when a little child, and she had been unable in any other way to express her feelings of delight. Dick spoke:
“Well, Little Missy, ain’t it a purty location; though why you should thump the old lady I don’t quite see. Say, if ye want physical exercise of that kind why don’t ye lam inter me! Guess I’m built more suitable fur it than that purty creetur!”
Mrs. Elstree had been slightly annoyed at being spoken of as an old lady, but Dick’s compliment set matters straight again, and she shook her golden head at him, and her blue eyes danced as she said:
“It’s evident, Mr. Grizzly, that you don’t understand the feelings of a mother when her child is happy. You are not a mother!”
“Guess not!” roared Dick; “not by a jug full!” and he slapped his thigh, and laughed with that infectious laugh of his.
Esse did not altogether like to hear him laugh, especially without good cause; so to divert the subject she asked him how the tree could tell what hour it was.
“Come and see,” answered Dick, as he threw the reins of his pony to an Indian, and strode towards the house, followed eagerly by the two women, holding arms.
When they got near the hedge they turned to the right, and followed it for a little time. On the west side they found a gateway, which Dick opened. The gate seemed ridiculously massive for such a place, and was studded all over with sharp steel spikes.
“What on earth are they for?” asked Esse, pointing.
The answer was as complete as it was short.
“B’ars! Things didn’t uster be as they are now!”
They all went inside the inclosure, and as they drew in front of the great pine Dick spread out his arms, and with a comprehensive sweep took in the whole circle of the compass.
“Look, Little Missy,” said he; “tell me now what o’clock it is?”
Esse looked around, and up and down, but could see no sign of any time-keeping appliance. She was disturbed by a quick little cry from her mother:
“Oh, look! Esse! look! look! the whole garden is a sun-dial!”
Esse looked, and sure enough all around her, at intervals, rose groups of tall, slim pines, but at varied distances, so that there was no appearance of a ring. Some of them leaned from the perpendicular in a queer way, and yet all were so arranged that a perfect sun-dial with Roman numerals was formed, and the shadow of the great pine fell with the movement of the whirling earth, and told the tale of flying hours. There was a long pause, and Esse turned to Dick.
“Dick, did you do this?”
Again the hunter slapped his thigh in mirth and his wild, resonant cachinnation seemed to sound louder than ever, as though there were some containing acoustic quality in the prickly fence. Esse got somewhat nettled, and there was a red spot on each cheek as she said:
“I don’t see much to laugh at in that. I don’t see why you can’t answer a simple question without being rude!”
Dick sobered at once, and, with a grave courtesy that seemed like a knightly act by a natural man, took off his cap and bowed his head.
“Askin’ yer pardon, Little Missy. I’d no mind to be rude, nor no call to. Why, I’d not a thought of that in a thousand years. That was all done by the old doctor who found this place, and built the house, and fixed up the fence and the garden. Took a mighty deal o’ pleasure in it too, seemin’ly. Every year he was here he left it less and less, till at the end he wouldn’t ha’ quitted, not for a farce-comedy speciality an’ a comicopera troupe rolled inter one! ‘Pears to me, Little Missy, that you’ve come along jest in time, for there’s many as would like to hev the place if onst they knowed of it.”
Esse made no other reply than:
“Come along, Dick, and show me the view. I want to see the Pacific from up here.”
Without a word Dick strode away to the rocky ledge over which the stream tumbled. As they got near it Miss Gimp, who had been grizzling with the indifference of all to her presence, overtook them, and said in a tone which all could hear:
“Wants to show her all the kingdoms of the earth from a high place! We know what to make of him!” and she snorted.
Esse looked at her with an amused smile, but Mrs. Elstree felt annoyed, and, in order to get rid of her, asked her to go into the house and see Mrs. Le Maistre, who was the housekeeper, as to the arrival. She complied with outward calmness, but was shortly afterwards seen going to the house with several Indians. One of them carried the cats, and another the dog, while a third held out at arm’s length the cage of the parrot, which, from its talking, he evidently regarded with some very remarkable awe. She was letting off steam by poking the Indians in the back with the point of her umbrella. They did not resent it, but took it with that outward stoicism which marked their bearing. This aggravated her even more, and she poked the harder; but still the Indians did not resent it. She would have been not a little mortified had she known the cause of their forbearance.
Mrs. Elstree and Esse stood for a long time looking at the view, and then Dick took them northward along a ledge of rock behind the belt of trees. Here there was a high, bare rock with a flat top, and on it was a natural seat of rock, resting whereon they looked round the whole horizon, except where the giant bulk of Shasta shut out the southern aspect.
Esse was in a trance of delight. Below her the mountain fell away in billows of green, through which the rivers ran like threads of silver. Far away, where the whole landscape became merged in one dark, misty expanse, she could see the Pacific, a grey mass of nothingness, fringed on the near side with the jagged edge of the coast, and beyond, the arc of the horizon. Here and there in the plain hills rose and valleys dipped; but their heights and depths were lost in the distance, and had no more individual existence than the pattern of a carpet. Then she looked south, and her eye travelled up the steep side of the mountain, passing from the lessening fringe of forest to where the hardy trees stood out starkly one by one in the isolation of their strength to endure; up the rolling steep where