one could not touch them with bare hand. The close of the
afternoon was approaching, and this slope was interminably long. Still,
it was not steep, and the trail was good.

At last from the height of slope Wildfire appeared, looking back and
down. Then he was gone. Slone plodded upward. Long before he reached
that summit be heard the dull rumble of the river. It grew to be a
roar, yet it seemed distant. Would the great desert river stop Wildfire
in his flight? Slone doubted it. He surmounted the ridge, to find the
canyon opening in a tremendous gap, and to see down, far down, a
glittering, sun-blasted slope merging into a deep, black gulch where a
red river swept and chafed and roared.

Somehow the river was what he had expected to see. A force that had cut
and ground this canyon could have been nothing but a river like that.
The trail led down, and Slone had no doubt that it crossed the river
and led up out of the canyon. He wanted to stay there and gaze
endlessly and listen. At length he began the descent. As he proceeded
it seemed that the roar of the river lessened. He could not understand
why this was so. It took half an hour to reach the last level, a
ghastly, black, and iron-ribbed canyon bed, with the river splitting
it. He had not had a glimpse of Wildfire on this side of the divide,
but he found his tracks, and they led down off the last level, through
a notch in the black bank of marble to a sand-bar and the river.

Wildfire had walked straight off the sand into the water. Slone studied
the river and shore. The water ran slow, heavily, in sluggish eddies.
From far up the canyon came the roar of a rapid, and from below the
roar of another, heavier and closer. The river appeared tremendous, in
ways Slone felt rather than realized, yet it was not swift. Studying
the black, rough wall of rock above him, he saw marks where the river
had been sixty feet higher than where he stood on the sand. It was low,
then. How lucky for him that he had gotten there before flood season!
He believed Wildfire had crossed easily, and he knew Nagger could make
it. Then he piled and tied his supplies and weapons high on the saddle,
to keep them dry, and looked for a place to take to the water.

Wildfire had sunk deep before reaching the edge. Manifestly he had
lunged the last few feet. Slone found a better place, and waded in,
urging Nagger. The big horse plunged, almost going under, and began to
swim. Slone kept up-stream beside