hat upon the rail-hook next to his own belonged to Mr. Lester Wingfield;
that the hand-bags over which he had stumbled in the dimly lighted aisle
were the _impedimenta_ of the ladies Van Bryck; or that the dainty
little boots proclaiming the sex--and youth--of his fellow-traveller in
the opposite Number Six were the foot-gear of Miss Elsa Craigmiles.

IV

ARCADY

Arcadia Park, as the government map-makers have traced it, is a
high-lying, enclosed valley in the heart of the middle Rockies, roughly
circular in outline, with a curving westward sweep of the great range
for one-half of its circumscribing rampart, and the bent bow of the Elk
Mountains for the other.

Apart from storming the rampart heights, accessible only to the hardy
prospector or to the forest ranger, there are three ways of approach to
the shut-in valley: up the outlet gorge of the Boiling Water, across the
Elk Mountains from the Roaring Fork, or over the high pass in the
Continental Divide from Alta Vista.

It was from the summit of the high pass that Ballard had his first view
of Arcadia. From Alta Vista the irrigation company's narrow-gauge
railway climbs through wooded gorges and around rock-ribbed snow balds,
following the route of the old stage trail; and Ballard's introductory
picture of the valley was framed in the cab window of the locomotive
sent over by Bromley to transport him to the headquarters camp on the
Boiling Water.

In the wide prospect opened by the surmounting of the high pass there
was little to suggest the human activities, and still less to foreshadow
strife. Ballard saw a broad-acred oasis in the mountain desert, billowed
with undulating meadows, and having for its colour scheme the gray-green
of the range grasses. Winding among the billowy hills in the middle
distance, a wavering double line of aspens marked the course of the
Boiling Water. Nearer at hand the bald slopes of the Saguache pitched
abruptly to the forested lower reaches; and the path of the railway,
losing itself at the timber line, reappeared as a minute scratch scoring
the edge of the gray-green oasis, to vanish, distance effaced, near a
group of mound-shaped hills to the eastward.

The start from Alta Vista with the engine "special" had been made at
sunrise, long before any of Ballard's fellow-travellers in the
sleeping-car were stirring. But the day had proved unseasonably warm in
the upper snow fields, and there had been time-killing delays.