“Mine!” she said aloud, just to see how it would sound. “Mine!”
It would take a long time to explore the place thoroughly.
“I must be able to tell Nancy about every bit of it,” she told herself.
Yet first she sat very quietly, for a little, on the rough stone step. She had hurried up the hill, eager to see the new place; she had been hurrying for the last two days, getting the house in the village settled; she had hurried before the journey: when indeed had she not been hurrying? It was very pleasant to sit so still and let the silent minutes march by to the tune of rustling pine branches and the murmuring waterfall. As she sat looking down into the valley, time seemed very big and calm and empty, instead of bustling and full.
She rose at last to go on with her explorations. Behind the cabin was the tumbling cascade that identified the place, a plunge of foaming waters over a high ledge with a still black pool below, shot with gleams of sunshine and full of darting trout. Beyond the stream, almost hidden from sight by the high slope of the ravine, was the roof of another house, a larger one than hers, with a whole group of chimneys sending forth a curl of smoke to indicate that here were neighbors. Looking up the course of the brook she could see where the dense shadows of the pine grove ended and the waters ran in brighter sunshine on the higher slope.
“I should like to see what it is like up there,” she thought, “but I must be quick; it is getting late.”
She went scrambling up the rocky slope, feeling a little breathless, but forgetting entirely that in such a high altitude haste is far from wise. In a moment her lungs seemed entirely empty and her heart began to pound against her side, but she pressed on, determined to reach a certain high rock before she turned back. It was a rash desire, for presently she was obliged to lie down upon the rough grass to gasp and rest and gather herself together for another effort. She got up to struggle forward again, for she was not used to abandoning a fixed purpose, but after a few yards she was forced to lie down once more, panting and completely exhausted.
“I don’t believe I understand the Rocky Mountains,” she reflected as she lay, limp and flat, looking across the barren valley, the sparsely wooded slopes, to the rising peaks opposite. She had been accustomed to mountains like the Adirondacks, round and covered thick with forest almost to the summit, friendly heights that invited one to climb them. It was a far cry from them to the precipitate slopes of Gray Cloud Mountain.