oke resembled
those she had seen before.

"It's a long way off," she added.

So she kept on, now and then gazing at the smoke. As she grew nearer to
the first monument she was surprised, then amazed, at its height and
surpassing size. It was mountain-high--a grand tower--smooth, worn,
glistening, yellow and red. The trail she had followed petered out in a
deep wash, and beyond that she crossed no more trails. The sage had
grown meager and the greasewoods stunted and dead; and cacti appeared
on barren places. The grass had not failed, but it was not rich grass
such as the horses and cattle grazed upon miles back on the slope. The
air was hot down here. The breeze was heavy and smelled of fire, and
the sand was blowing here and there. She had a sense of the bigness,
the openness of this valley, and then she realized its wildness and
strangeness. These lonely, isolated monuments made the place different
from any she had visited. They did not seem mere standing rocks. They
seemed to retreat all the time as she approached, and they watched her.
They interested her, made her curious. What had formed all these
strange monuments? Here the ground was level for miles and miles, to
slope gently up to the bases of these huge rocks. In an old book she
had seen pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, but these appeared vaster,
higher, and stranger, and they were sheerly perpendicular.

Suddenly Sage King halted sharply, shot up his ears, and whistled. Lucy
was startled. That from the King meant something. Hastily, with keen
glance she swept the foreground. A mile on, near the monument, was a
small black spot. It seemed motionless. But the King's whistle had
proved it to be a horse. When Lucy had covered a quarter of the
intervening distance she could distinguish the horse and that there
appeared some thing strange about his position. Lucy urged Sage King
into a lope and soon drew nearer. The black horse had his head down,
yet he did not appear to be grazing. He was as still as a statue. He
stood just outside a clump of greasewood and cactus.

Suddenly a sound pierced the stillness. The King jumped and snorted in
fright. For an instant Lucy's blood ran cold, for it was a horrible
cry. Then she recognized it as the neigh of a horse in agony. She had
heard crippled and dying horses utter that long-drawn and
blood-curdling neigh. The black horse had not moved, so the sound could
not have come from him. Lucy thought Sage King acted more ex