ining the outlet which he took to be the
pass, he rode on again under over hanging walls. One side was dark in
shade, the other light in sun. This narrow passageway turned and twisted
and opened into a valley that amazed Venters.

Here again was a sweep of purple sage, richer than upon the higher
levels. The valley was miles long, several wide, and inclosed by
unscalable walls. But it was the background of this valley that so
forcibly struck him. Across the sage-flat rose a strange up-flinging of
yellow rocks. He could not tell which were close and which were distant.
Scrawled mounds of stone, like mountain waves, seemed to roll up to
steep bare slopes and towers.

In this plain of sage Venters flushed birds and rabbits, and when he had
proceeded about a mile he caught sight of the bobbing white tails of
a herd of running antelope. He rode along the edge of the stream which
wound toward the western end of the slowly looming mounds of stone.
The high slope retreated out of sight behind the nearer protection.
To Venters the valley appeared to have been filled in by a mountain of
melted stone that had hardened in strange shapes of rounded outline.
He followed the stream till he lost it in a deep cut. Therefore Venters
quit the dark slit which baffled further search in that direction, and
rode out along the curved edge of stone where it met the sage. It was
not long before he came to a low place, and here Wrangle readily climbed
up.

All about him was ridgy roll of wind-smoothed, rain-washed rock. Not a
tuft of grass or a bunch of sage colored the dull rust-yellow. He saw
where, to the right, this uneven flow of stone ended in a blunt wall.
Leftward, from the hollow that lay at his feet, mounted a gradual
slow-swelling slope to a great height topped by leaning, cracked,
and ruined crags. Not for some time did he grasp the wonder of that
acclivity. It was no less than a mountain-side, glistening in the sun
like polished granite, with cedar-trees springing as if by magic out of
the denuded surface. Winds had swept it clear of weathered shale, and
rains had washed it free of dust. Far up the curved slope its beautiful
lines broke to meet the vertical rim-wall, to lose its grace in a
different order and color of rock, a stained yellow cliff of cracks and
caves and seamed crags. And straight before Venters was a scene less
striking but more significant to his keen survey. For beyond a mile
of the bare, hummocky rock began the