CHAPTER XI
AN URSINE HOLD-UP
The party of young people were so excited by the adventure that they were scarcely in mind to appreciate the rugged beauty of the canon. The opposite wall was covered with verdure—hardy trees and shrubs found their rootage in the crevices between the rocks. Some beds of moss, far down where the spray from the river continually irrigated the thin soil, were spangled so thickly with starlike, white flowers that the patches looked like brocaded bedspreads.
Around the elbow in the trail—that sharp turn which had been the scene of the all but fatal accident—the driveway broadened. Far ahead (for the canon was here quite straight again) they could see the arching roof of rock, surmounted by the primeval forest, which formed the so-called natural bridge. The river tumbled out of the darkness of the tunnel, fretted to a foaming cascade by battling with the boulders which strewed its bed under the roof-rock. The water's surface gleamed ghostly in the shadow of the arch, and
89
