THE RIDGE TRAIL

Six trails lead to the main ridge.They are all good trails, so that even the casual tourist in the little Spanish-American town on the seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent.In some spots they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose boulders and shale.A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall.The major premise stands:

even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear, however scared he may become.

Our favorite route to the main ridge was by a way called the Cold Spring Trail.We used to enjoy taking visitors up it, mainly because you come on the top suddenly, without warning.Then we collected remarks.Everybody, even the most stolid, said something.

You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually ascending creek-bed of a canon, a halfhour of laboring steepness in the overarching mountain lilac and laurel.There you came to a great rock gateway which seemed the top of the world.At the gateway was a Bad Place where the ponies planted warily their little hoofs, and the visitor played "eyes front," and besought that his mount should not stumble.

Beyond the gateway a lush level canon into which you plunged as into a bath; then again the laboring trail, up and always up toward the blue California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood chaparral into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the fine angular shale of the upper regions.Beyond the apparent summit you found always other summits yet to be climbed.And all at once, like thrusting your shoulders out of a hatchway, you looked over the top.

Then came the remarks.Some swore softly; some uttered appreciative ejaculation; some shouted aloud;some gasped; one man uttered three times the word "Oh,"--once breathlessly, Oh! once in awakening appreciation, OH! once in wild enthusiasm, OH!

Then invariably they fell silent and looked.