There seemed at first nothing to be done but take the next returning train, which, under the circumstances, was objectionable.  A night’s rest and a telegram that had to be sent twelve miles by special messenger, improved the situation.  The proprietor was unavoidably detained at Wind Cave, but secured a reliable guide, expressed me the cave keys, and has since married the “specimen” he had gone in quest of.  May great happiness dwell at the cave many years!

The morning of the third day after our arrival found arrangements all complete, and soon after the train left Piedmont it entered Elk Creek Canon, which is always beautiful, but on that morning was exceptionally so on account of a sudden change in the weather having covered every visible portion of the passing landscape with heavy frost.  The trees on distant hills that ordinarily are black, were, for once, all softly white, and when the tall pines in the canon were shaken by a breeze, they cast a shower of flakes like snow.

Here the canon walls are in Carboniferous Limestone with a pleasing variety of color in the strata, and the erosion-carving not overdone, the most notable piece being the Knife-blade.  This, at first view, appears to be a high, round tower, but the train following the curve, reveals the fact that it is not a tower, but a thin, curved knife-blade.  The sun just for one instant shone through a rift in the clouds, and added special charm to the scene.

[Illustration:  The Knife-Blade.  Page 178.]

A short distance beyond is Crystal Cave station, where the guide was waiting to take us in charge.  He is an intelligent young man who has served an enlistment term in the army, is recently married, very obliging, and proud of being trustworthy.

The scenery here is most beautiful as well as grand.  The canon makes a sharp turn toward the south, and on the north opens out into another canon of even greater beauty and higher walls, the perpendicular being three hundred feet in places.  Crystal Cave is in the hill embraced by the junction curve.  The natural entrance is more than two hundred feet above the canon bed and was naturally approached from above.  A short walk up the north canon, whose name has unfortunately slipped away, was over ice and snow the chinook had failed to reach, and brought us to a long stairway against the wall, which affords a more direct approach than nature gave and is a fair test of physical perfection.

Finally a resting place is reached where the grandeur of the view can be enjoyed; and then a shorter stairway completes the ascent of the wall, but not of the hill, so there is still a considerable upward walk through the forest of tall pines all carpeted with brilliant mats of kinnikinic with its shining leaves, glowing in shades of green and red, trying to rival the bright scarlet berries.  The kinnikinic here resembles the wintergreen of the east, while in the mountains in Colorado it grows in the form of a shrub two to three feet in height, but with no variation in the leaf or berry.