s throat, as he
caught one last glimpse of Jane. On he hurried. He was off now, and
the sooner he got home the better. By rapid walking and some hard
climbing he would reach Indian Bill's old cabin, ten miles down the
river, by night.

He had just resolved on this, leaped over a creek stealing down far
behind El Capitan, got full in sight of the roaring rapids, when he
heard a step behind him and looked up to see Indian Bill himself
coming. The old trapper was a well-known character in the mountains.
His great brown feet looking out beneath torn blue overalls, his
dark-skinned chest wrapped in a blanket of many colors, his long
straight hair falling from beneath a well-worn sombrero, formed a
familiar sight all over those mountains. Those feet had tramped every
mountain pass and rugged trail and had climbed every lofty peak for a
hundred miles about the Yosemite.

His approach was a glad surprise to Job. He could wish no better
companion over that lonely trail which led along the precipitous sides
of the canyon, with straight walls towering above it and steep descents
reaching below to the Merced's angry waters, which dash for twenty
miles over gigantic boulders with a fury unrivaled by Niagara itself.

Soon Indian Bill was driving away Job's gloom as, in his queer
dialect, he told one of his trapper stories while the two swung on at
regular gait, close upon each other's heels. Over the steep grades,
through the deep, shaded ravines, and along the bare cliffs on that
narrow trail, they went. They had gone a mile down the stream, when
Job noticed something moving, high on the opposite cliff. He called
his companion's attention to it, and the keen-eyed Indian said it was
a horseman mounted on a black steed. Job thought of Jane, but at once
said to himself that it could not be she--she was back at Camp Comfort
by this time. A little later, Bill said the horse was now riderless
and standing by a tree, and that a bit of something white was moving
on the face of the cliff.

Just then they heard a terrible roar, and both forgot all else in the
queer sensation that seized them. All the world seemed to sway before
Job's eyes. The mountains below, where the river bends, seemed a thing
of life. His feet slipped on the narrow edge of a steep cliff he was
crossing, the gravel beneath gave way, and Job found himself lying at
the foot of a steep incline, while a whole fusillade of stones was
flying past him. A moment, and it was