In the
next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great
many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed
that he often wondered how he had ever thought this scary riding. Now,
however, he was so busily occupied that he was caught by surprise when
Lejeune's mule turned off through a patch of breast-high manzanita and
he found himself traversing the gentler slope at the foot of the
mountain. Ten minutes later they entered Sycamore Flats.
Then Bob had leisure to notice an astonishing change of temperature. At
the mill the air had been almost cold--entirely so out of the direct
rays of the sun. Here it was as hot as though from a furnace. Passing
the store, Bob saw that the tall thermometer there stood at 96 degrees.
The day was unseasonable, but later, in the August heats, Bob had often,
to his sorrow, to test the difference between six thousand and two
thousand feet of elevation. From a clear, crisp late-spring climate he
would descend in two hours to a temperature of 105 degrees.
Henry Plant was discovered sprawled out in an armchair beneath a
spreading tree in the front yard.
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