The old lady from
Chicago would have none of him; so we loafed alone together, now
across half-rotten pine logs sunk in swampy ground, anon over the
ringing geyser formation, then pounding through river-sand or
brushing knee-deep through long grass.
"And why did you enlist?" said I.
The moon-faced one's face began to work. I thought he would have
a fit, but he told me a story instead - such a nice tale of a
naughty little girl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at
once. She was a simple village wife, but a wicked "family
novelette" countess couldn't have accomplished her ends better.
She drove one man nearly wild with the pretty little treachery,
and the other man abandoned her and came West to forget the
trickery.
Moon-face was that man.
We rounded and limped over a low spur of hill, and came out upon
a field of aching, snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into
knots, riven with rents, and diamonds, and stars, stretching for
more than half a mile in every direction.
On this place of despair lay most of the big, bad geysers who
know when there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when
there is a cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are
exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names.
The first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin who was
splashing in his tub.
