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Suffering as I was by this time, with cramp in my legs, and torturing pain, I had to choose between holding my horse in or falling off; so I chose the former and accordingly got behind. Dead cedar and pinyon trees lay everywhere, with their contorted limbs reaching out like the arms of a devil-fish. Stones blocked every opening.
Slone dismounted and, leading him, went cautiously forward on foot, rifle in hand. The canyon widened at a point where two breaks occurred, and the less-restricted space was thick with cedar and pinyon. Slone could tell by the presence of these trees and also by a keener atmosphere that he was slowly getting to a higher attitude.
But his height enabled him to reach a root, by which he pulled himself up. Sounder he lassoed a la Jones, and hauled up. At another spot, which Sounder climbed, he lassoed a pinyon above, and walked up with his feet slipping from under him at every step. The knees of his corduroy trousers were holes, as were the elbows of his coat.
Huge pine trees shaded these gullies, to give way to the gray growth of stunted oak, which in turn merged into the dark green of pinyon. A wonderful country for deer and lions, it seemed to me, but impassable, all but impossible for a hunter. Frank soon appeared, brushing through the bending oaks, and Sounder trotted along behind him. "Where's Moze?" inquired Jones.
I caught Wallace at the summit, and we raced together out upon another flat of pinyon. We heard Frank and Jones yelling in a way that caused us to spur our horses frantically. Spot, gleaming white near a clump of green pinyons, was our guiding star. That last quarter of a mile was a ringing run, a ride to remember.
Wallace signaled, and our leader answered twice. We caught up with him on the brink of another ravine deeper and craggier than the first, full of dead, gnarled pinyon and splintered rocks. "This gulch is the largest of the three that head in at Oak Spring," said Jones. "Boys, don't forget your direction. Always keep a feeling where camp is, always sense it every time you turn.
The slopes under the cliffs were dotted with huge stones and cedar-trees. There were deep indentations in the walls, running back to form box canyon, choked with green of cedar and spruce and pinyon. These notches haunted Shefford, and he was ever on the lookout for more of them. Withers came back to ride just in advance and began to talk.
When I again stopped, all I could hear was the thumping of my heart and the labored panting of Satan. I came to a break in the cliff, a steep place of weathered rock, and I put Satan to it. He went up with a will. From the narrow saddle of the ridge-crest I tried to take my bearings. Below me slanted the green of pinyon, with the bleached treetops standing like spears, and uprising yellow stones.
When Shefford awoke next morning and sat up on his bed of pinyon boughs the dawn had broken cold with a ruddy gold brightness under the trees. Nas Ta Bega and Lassiter were busy around a camp-fire; the mustangs were haltered near by; Jane Withersteen combed out her long, tangled tresses with a crude wooden comb; and Fay Larkin was not in sight.
Got him?" he answered, leaning over the cliff. "I see him," called Tad, his voice sounding hollow and unnatural to those above. "He's so far to the right of me that I can't reach him. Will it be all right for me to swing myself?" "Where is he?" "Lodged in the branches of a pinyon tree, I think it is. But he doesn't answer me." "Wait a minute," cautioned the mountaineer.
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