l dam.

Yet not all the heaps lying on the ledges were driftwood. As Ashton
approached, he was horrified to see that the largest and highest
situated piles were nothing else than masses of bones. Drawn by a
gruesome fascination, he climbed up to the nearest of the ghastly
heaps. The loose ribs and vertebrae scattered down the slope seemed to
him the size of human ribs and vertebrae. He shuddered as they crunched
under his tread.

Then he saw a skull with spiral-curved horns. He looked up the canyon
wall, and understood. The high-heaped bones were the skeletons of
sheep. In a flash, he remembered Isobel's account of Gowan, that first
day up there on the top of the mesa. Not only had the puncher killed
six men; he had, together with other violent men of the cattle ranges,
driven thousands of sheep over into the canyon--and this was the
place.

Sick with horror and loathing, Ashton ran to snatch up an armful of
the smaller driftwood and hurry back down to the center of the
barrier. He found Blake lying white and still. But beside him were
three cartridges from which the bullets had been worked out. At the
terse command of the engineer, Ashton ground one of the older and
drier pieces of wood to minute fragments on a rock.

Blake emptied the powder from one of the cartridges into the little
pile of splinters, and holding the edge of another shell against a
corner of the rock, tapped the cap with a stone. At the fifth stroke
the cap exploded. The loosened powder of the cartridge flared out into
the powder-sprinkled tinder. Soon a fire of the dry, half-rotted
driftwood was blazing bright and almost smokeless in the twilight of
the depths.

"Now haul up the rod," directed Blake, and he lay back to bask in the
grateful warmth.

Ashton drew up the level rod and came back over the ledge. He found
that the engineer had freed himself from the last coils of the rope
and was unraveling the end that had been next his body. But his eyes
were upturned to the heights.

"Look--the flag!" he said.

"Already?" exclaimed Ashton.

"Yes. No doubt one of them has been waiting on that out-jutting
point.--Now, if you'll break the rod. We've got to get my leg into
splints."

The crude splints were soon ready. For bandages there were strips from
the tattered shirts of both men. Unraveled rope-strands, burnt off in
the fire, served to lash all together. Beads of cold sweat gathered
and rolled down Blake's white face throughout the crue