But it was at sunset of the following clay, when the train was speeding
down the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that the
West took its ruthless revenge.
Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and a
luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which was
the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling the
wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her,
spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament, and
the mountain range that it canopied so exquisitely.
A rich and mellow light, singularly clear, seemed to flood out of some
unknown source. For the sun was hidden. The clouds just above Carley hung
low, and they were like thick, heavy smoke, mushrooming, coalescing,
forming and massing, of strange yellow cast of mative. It shaded westward
into heliotrope and this into a purple so royal, so matchless and rare that
Carley understood why the purple of the heavens could never be reproduced
in paint. Here the cloud mass thinned and paled, and a tint of rose began
to flush the billowy, flowery, creamy white. Then came the surpassing
splendor of this cloud pageant--a vast canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired
surface like an opal sea, rippled and webbed, with the exquisite texture of
an Oriental fabric, pure, delicate, lovely--as no work of human hands could
be.
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