第22章

All at once there came to Slone a strange consciousness of light and wind and space and void.On the instant his horse halted with a snort.Slone quickly looked up.Had he come to the end of the world? An abyss, a canyon, yawned beneath him, beyond all comparison in its greatness.His keen eye, educated to desert distance and dimension, swept down and across, taking in the tremendous truth, before it staggered his comprehension.But a second sweeping glance, slower, becoming intoxicated with what it beheld, saw gigantic cliff-steps and yellow slopes dotted with cedars, leading down to clefts filled with purple smoke, and these led on and on to a ragged red world of rock, bare, shining, bold, uplifted in mesa, dome, peak, and crag, clear and strange in the morning light, still and sleeping like death.

This, then, was the great canyon, which had seemed like a hunter's fable rather than truth.Slone's sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he found that his eyes had filled with tears.He wiped them away and looked again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and the grandeur and the vague sadness of the scene.Nothing he had ever looked at had affected him like this canyon, although the Stewarts had tried to prepare him for it.

It was the horse-hunter's passion that reminded him of his pursuit.The deer trail led down through a break in the wall.Only a few rods of it could be seen.This trail was passable, even though choked with snow.But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him back, used as he was to desert trails.Then the clean mark of Wildfire's hoof brought back the old thrill.

"This place fits you, Wildfire," muttered Slone, dismounting.

He started down, leading Nagger.The mustang followed.Slone kept to the wall side of the trail, fearing the horses might slip.The snow held firmly at first and Slone had no trouble.The gap in the rim-rock widened to a slope thickly grown over with cedars and pinyons and manzanita.This growth made the descent more laborious, yet afforded means at least for Slone to go down with less danger.There was no stopping.Once started, the horses had to keep on.

Slone saw the impossibility of ever climbing out while that snow was there.

The trail zigzagged down and down.Very soon the yellow wall hung tremendously over him, straight up.The snow became thinner and softer.The horses began to slip.They slid on their haunches.Fortunately the slope grew less steep, and Slone could see below where it reached out to comparatively level ground.

Still, a mishap might yet occur.Slone kept as close to Nagger as possible, helping him whenever he could do it.The mustang slipped, rolled over, and then slipped past Slone, went down the slope to bring up in a cedar.Slone worked down to him and extricated him.Then the huge Nagger began to slide.

Snow and loose rock slid with him, and so did Slone.The little avalanche stopped of its own accord, and then Slone dragged Nagger on down and down, presently to come to the end of the steep descent.Slone looked up to see that he had made short work of a thousand-foot slope.Here cedars and pinyons grew thickly enough to make a forest.The snow thinned out to patches, and then failed.But the going remained bad for a while as the horses sank deep in a soft red earth.This eventually grew more solid and finally dry.Slone worked out of the cedars to what appeared a grassy plateau inclosed by the great green-and-white slope with its yellow wall over hanging, and distant mesas and cliffs.Here his view was restricted.He was down on the first bench of the great canyon.And there was the deer trail, a well-worn path keeping to the edge of the slope.Slone came to a deep cut in the earth, and the trail headed it, where it began at the last descent of the slope.It was the source of a canyon.He could look down to see the bare, worn rock, and a hundred yards from where he stood the earth was washed from its rims and it began to show depth and something of that ragged outline which told of violence of flood.

The trail headed many canyons like this, all running down across this bench, disappearing, dropping invisibly.The trail swung to the left under the great slope, and then presently it climbed to a higher bench.Here were brush and grass and huge patches of sage, so pungent that it stung Slone's nostrils.

Then he went down again, this time to come to a clear brook lined by willows.

Here the horses drank long and Slone refreshed himself.The sun had grown hot.

There was fragrance of flowers he could not see and a low murmur of a waterfall that was likewise invisible.For most of the time his view was shut off, but occasionally he reached a point where through some break he saw towers gleaming red in the sun.A strange place, a place of silence, and smoky veils in the distance.Time passed swiftly.Toward the waning of the afternoon he began to climb to what appeared to be a saddle of land, connecting the canyon wall on the left with a great plateau, gold-rimmed and pine-fringed, rising more and more in his way as he advanced.At sunset Slone was more shut in than for several hours.He could tell the time was sunset by the golden light on the cliff wall again overhanging him.The slope was gradual up to this pass to the saddle, and upon coming to a spring, and the first pine-trees, he decided to halt for a camp.The mustang was almost exhausted.

Thereupon he hobbled the horses in the luxuriant grass round the spring, and then unrolled his pack.Once as dusk came stealing down, while he was eating his meal, Nagger whistled in fright.Slone saw a gray, pantherish form gliding away into the shadows.He took a quick shot at it, but missed.