Chapter XVII: A Lake Bewitched

The next morning early, the Educational Film squad set out early to meet Lola, who had promised to show them some of the beauties of Raton Range that no one but a native of the mountains would be cognizant of.

Lola, Westy and Rip walked ahead chatting gayly. Up narrow paths they went single file. Paths that were partially hidden with underbrush and had felt the tread of many generations of mankind, both red and white, were now overgrown from disuse.

Above them the barren-coned peaks rose high into the cloudless blue, and the weird-shaped forms stood like sentinels guarding the miles of untracked mountain wilderness.

After lunch Lola led the way out of a narrow ravine, up ever higher, and thence out on a broad terrace. Brilliant Alpine plants and flaming cactus were growing in profusion, and further on they came to a lake gleaming like a mirror in the afternoon sun.

On all three sides of it were towering cliffs covered with pine and great piles of gray rock.

On one side of the lake, directly opposite them, straight upwards from the water’s edge, a cliff was indented in places like a narrow stairway and ended abruptly in what looked to be a depression from where they stood. It attracted the onlooker at once by virtue of this peculiarity.

Where the other cliffs had piled their growth of rock until they seemed to merge themselves with the white-capped crest of the Range this one resembled a dwarfed step-sister, stunted and despised by its loftier kin.

The younger members of the party sat down at the edge of the lake, while Billy and Mr. Wilde maneuvered around for some good scenes. Then they went back a way to the broad terrace and left them to their own interests for awhile.

Rip was talking loudly and skipping some stones in the lake. It was this that Westy thought at first made the sounds he was hearing. But he heard it again, and again, whenever Rip lowered his voice or when Lola answered.

“What’s that noise, I wonder?”

“What noise?” Rip inquired.

“I don’t know what it is, that’s why I’m asking you. Can’t you hear it?”

“No! You’re crazy!”

“Well, quit talking for five minutes and you’ll hear some sounds besides your own!”

They all sat quiet for a few minutes and it came again; a sound like thousands of bees droning their delight in a world overflowing with nectar. Sometimes it would gradually lessen and die away slowly against the rock-ribbed cliffs, like the finale of an organ’s peal, echoing and reëchoing in the dim recesses of an old cathedral. Then it would start again, the same as before. It was weird.

Westy looked to Lola, a question half formed on his lips. She was smiling.

“What’s the joke?”

“I forgot to mention it before,” she said simply.

“What?”

“Only that there’s a legend connected with this place. The lake supposedly is bewitched and the stunted cliff you see up there is haunted!”