lay one upon the other, these ledges of lime and sandstone, some red,
some yellow, some white; and, heaped upon the top like a rich coating of
chocolate, was the brownish-black cap of the lava. In ages long past
each layer had been a mud bank at the bottom of a tropic sea, until the
weight of waters had pressed them down and time had changed them to
stone. Then Mother Earth had breathed and in a slow, century-long heave,
they had emerged from the bottom of the sea, there to be broken and
shattered by the pent-up forces of the fire which was raging in her
breast.

Great rents had been formed, igneous rocks had boiled up through them;
and then in a grand, titanic effort the fire had forced its way up. For
centuries this extinct volcano had belched forth its lava, building up
the frowning heights of Apache Leap; and then once more the earth had
subsided and the waters of the ocean had rushed in. The edge of the
rim-rock had been sheered by torrential floods, erosion had fashioned
the far heights; until once more, with infinite groanings, the earth had
risen from the depths. There it stayed, cracking and trembling, as the
inner fires cooled down and the fury of the conflict died away; and
boiling waters bearing ores in solution burst like geysers from every
crack. And there atom by atom, combined with quartz and acids, the
metals of the earth were brought to the surface and deposited on the
sides of the cracks. Copper and gold and silver and lead, and many a
rarer metal, all spewed up from the molten heart of the world to be
sought out and used by man.

All this Denver sensed as he gazed at the high cliff where the volcano
had overflowed the earth, and at the layers and layers of sedimentary
rock that protruded from beneath its base; but his eyes, though they
sensed it, cared nothing for the great Cause--what they looked for was
the fruit of all that labor. Where along this shattered rim-rock,
twisted and hacked and uptilted, were the hidden cracks, the precious
fissure veins, that had brought up the ore from the depths? There at his
feet lay one, the gash through the rim where Queen Creek took its
course; and further to the north, where the rim-rock was wrenched to the
west, was another likely place. To the south there was another, a deep,
sharp canyon that broke through the formation to the heights; and over
them all, like a sheltering hand, lay the dark, moving shadow of Apache
Leap. He traced out its line as it crept