l go over there and
take a look around."

"Do you mind if Mr. Bentley and I go with you?" Agnes asked.

"I was going to suggest it," Walker replied, looking longingly at June.

June asked permission with her eyes; Mrs. Reed nodded, having overcome
her fears of Walker, owing to the substantial credentials which he was
able to show. Mrs. Mann put on her hat and slipped her black bag a bit
farther up her arm, and stood ready in a moment to join the expedition.
Mrs. Reed was to remain alone in camp to watch things, for they had been
warned that morning by the hotel people against a band of visiting
Indians, who picked up anything and everything that was not anchored at
least at one end.

It was late in the afternoon; the sun was low when they reached the
river. There wasn't anything to be made out of the footprints there. The
mouth of the canyon had been visited by a great many tourists, some of
whom had ventured within a little way to bring out stones for mementos
of their daring days of fearsome adventures in the West.

The party stood looking into the mouth of the narrow slit between the
high-towering walls. Down there it was already dark; the eye could
pierce the gloom but a little way.

"There are places in there where the sun never shines, even for a second
a day," Walker declared. "And that water goes through there with power
enough in it to grind a man's bones against the rocks. There must be a
fall of more than a thousand feet."

"I don't believe he went in there," said Agnes with finality, after
standing as if trance-bound for a long time, gazing after the foam-white
river as it roared into the echoing depths.

"No," Walker agreed. "He had too much sense for that."

They were all cheered and lightened by this conclusion. A daylight study
of the terrors of the place was sufficient to convince anybody that a
man would have to be driven to desperate lengths before he would venture
for the dubious reward or narrow notoriety to be gained by following
that wild river through its dark way.

"I camped over at the other side one summer," Walker told them as they
turned away to go back to Comanche, "and I used to pick up things that
had come through--boards and things that people had dropped in over at
Meander. It pounds things up, I tell you!"

"Did you ever pick up any gold on the other side?" asked June.

"I never found a trace of any," said Walker. "I think that's all a
sheep-herder's yarn."

They saw on