forward to the narrow opening between the two cliff walls. Then they beheld an extremely pretty, rather plump woman, with rose-colored cheeks and grey in her brown hair, riding astride a burro. The burro was being lead by another woman of the same age, extraordinarily like and yet unlike the other one. The woman on foot was more slender and paler, her hair was darker and not grey, and her eyes a deeper blue.
“Peggy, darling, for goodness sake help me get your mother off this beast,” she called out as soon as the two girls were inside the defile, “I have had to drag both the animal and Mollie Webster every inch of the way. See, Mollie, I told you that our camp was not far from this old cliff dwelling which the girls and I discovered and adopted the other day. You might easily have walked here.”
“So I might and would have, Polly O’Neill Burton, had I dreamed that you were going to make this wretched animal actually trot with me across a stone wilderness.”
During her protest, with some difficulty, Mrs. Webster was being persuaded to dismount from her burro by Peggy and Bettina. But she seemed not to have acquired the art of making the proper beginning, for her too long and too full skirt kept getting twisted around her.
“Better wear a proper Camp Fire costume, especially adapted for a Camp Fire guardian at the Grand Canyon of Arizona, Mollie,” Mrs. Burton suggested, going forward and leaving the girls to find some place to fasten the burro, when finally her beloved twin sister had made the descent to earth in safety.
Mrs. Burton’s costume was in fact charming and so simple that one would not easily have known how expensive it was. She wore tan-colored, high kid boots, wrinkling above the foot like mousquetaire gloves, a khaki-colored broadcloth coat and a short skirt with trousers of the same material beneath. Her hat was of French felt, a little deeper shade of brown, and trimmed with a soft red scarf.
“Billy, you look like an Indian chief with that blanket wrapped about you, provided one does not look too carefully on the inside,” she announced. “Hope the tea isn’t all gone; your mother needs some refreshment, although I don’t care for any.”
Then walking over to the edge of the cliff Mrs. Burton stood looking down, with a curious sensation of fascination and fear.
A moment later Mrs. Webster sat down beside her son, giving a suppressed sigh of relief. Billy seemed so much better, although he had been at the new Sunrise Camp but little over a week.
A short time before the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire party, who had been for several months living in a group of tents on the borders of the Painted Desert, had moved on to the neighborhood of the Grand Canyon. They were now in camp not far from the famous Angel Trail.
But before they were fairly settled a letter had arrived from Mrs. Webster saying that she would like to join the Camp Fire party and wished to bring along her two sons, Dan and Billy Webster.
There was no possibility of declining to welcome the newcomers, for it was Billy’s serious illness which had made a western trip necessary and forced his father’s consent to their joining his aunt’s camping party.
However, the campers were extraordinarily well pleased and particularly Polly Burton. For if her beloved Mollie were with her, surely her difficulties as Camp Fire guardian were over. She and Mollie were so unlike they were complements to each other.
“Fact is when we are together, Mollie mine, we have all the virtues and leave none to be desired,” Polly O’Neill, who was now Mrs. Richard Burton, had more than once announced to her twin sister.
And Mollie had laughed as she always did, accepting the speech as only one of her gifted sister’s absurdities. For, in spite of her Polly’s genius, her opinions never made much impression upon Mrs. Webster.
Nevertheless, perhaps on this point she was not altogether wrong. Already, since Mrs. Webster’s coming, the group of Camp Fire girls unconsciously were under the spell of its truth. There were some to whom Mollie Webster represented the influences which they needed and desired. She was far more motherly than her sister and loved to fuss and worry over each girl’s health and appetite. Yet, in her gentler fashion, she was really more exacting than Mrs. Burton, as such apparently yielding natures often are.
Already Alice Ashton and Vera Lageloff felt more closely drawn to Mrs. Webster – Vera, because she was Billy’s mother and had been her friend before she met Mrs. Burton.
With Alice Ashton the circumstances were different. For one thing, Alice felt that her Aunt Mollie took her more seriously and had a real respect for her intellectual interests and abilities. She could not always be perfectly certain that the other Camp Fire guardian was not sometimes a little amused by her ambitions.
Vera and Alice were both engaged in serving Mrs. Webster with tea. A moment later Bettina and Peggy walked over and stood on either side of Mrs. Burton.
“To what on earth, Tante, did you expect us to hitch that wretched beast?” Bettina demanded. “Peggy did finally manage to tie him to a cliff but it required an extraordinary amount of talent.”
Laughing, Mrs. Burton slipped one hand inside Peggy’s and the other in Bettina’s.
“Sorry, children, but I could not persuade Mollie to come with me in any other way and I did want her to see this wonderful view. You know how she hates walking, but perhaps we may get her into better habits while she is in the West with us. Look down there. The distance is tremendous, isn’t it? and yet this is only one of the smaller canyons – not the Grand Canyon. The roaring of the water sounds as far beneath as if it were the River Styx. But don’t get so close to the edge, Bettina. I thought looking down great heights made you feel uncomfortable.”
“Some one jumped or fell over this cliff the other day,” Peggy announced. “Ralph Marshall told me that the man had been a guest at the hotel where he is staying.”
Mrs. Burton shivered, drawing back in her usual impressionable fashion.
“Don’t tell us any gruesome details, please, Peggy dear. Remember it is the wonder and beauty of nature we must think of, and not its terribleness.”
Afterwards the woman and two girls were silent for a little while, each pursuing her own train of thought and each admiring in her fashion the marvelous spectacle before them.
It was as if a sunset had been inverted and its colors dropped down inside the cliffs, using the stones for clouds to hold the lights. Farther down, the walls of earth grew dark and finally a black stream ran between them.
A little later Mrs. Webster called to her sister and the two girls to join her. They then returned at once to the rest of the group and for half an hour sat there laughing and talking. For their background they had one of the most ancient dwellings of the human race ever found upon the earth, and their foreground was a portion of one of the great wonders of the world.
Nevertheless the Camp Fire party talked chiefly of their own affairs. After all, human beings are seldom vitally interested for long in anything save themselves and their own kind.
But, by and by, Mrs. Burton arose.
“Please hurry, everybody, we must get back to camp as soon as possible,” she suggested. “We forget that now September is here the days are getting shorter. I for one have not the courage to be lost in this part of the world. Moreover I have something to tell you when we reach camp which may surprise you.”
CHAPTER II
White Roses
The new camping site was by far the most beautiful the Sunrise
