I think the secret burst upon the family, with other things, at the big
picnic at Reservoir Canyon. This festivity had been arranged for weeks
previously, and was undertaken chiefly by the "Red Gulch Contingent,"
as we were called, as a slight return to the Piper family for their
frequent hospitality. The Piper sisters were expected to bring nothing
but their own personal graces and attend to the ministration of such
viands and delicacies as the boys had profusely supplied.

The site selected was Reservoir Canyon, a beautiful, triangular valley
with very steep sides, one of which was crowned by the immense reservoir
of the Pioneer Ditch Company. The sheer flanks of the canyon descended
in furrowed lines of vines and clinging bushes, like folds of falling
skirts, until they broke again into flounces of spangled shrubbery over
a broad level carpet of monkshood, mariposas, lupines, poppies, and
daisies. Tempered and secluded from the sun's rays by its lofty shadows,
the delicious obscurity of the canyon was in sharp contrast to the
fiery mountain trail that in the full glare of the noonday sky made
its tortuous way down the hillside, like a stream of lava, to plunge
suddenly into the valley and extinguish itself in its coolness as in a
lake. The heavy odors of wild honeysuckle, syringa, and ceanothus that
hung over it were lightened and freshened by the sharp spicing of pine
and bay. The mountain breeze which sometimes shook the serrated tops of
the large redwoods above with a chill from the remote snow peaks even in
the heart of summer, never reached the little valley.

It seemed an ideal place for a picnic. Everybody was therefore
astonished to hear that an objection was suddenly raised to this perfect
site. They were still more astonished to know that the objector was the
youngest Miss Piper! Pressed to give her reasons, she had replied that
the locality was dangerous; that the reservoir placed upon the mountain,