d his wet face.
From this point he could see his own ranch spread below him. Miramar,
he had named it--"Beautiful Sea." The name was half an affectionate
mockery of this land where the nearest water was fifty miles away, and
half because of the sea of blue that he looked at now. Garry had never
ceased to wonder at the mirage.

It was always the same in the summer heat--a phantom ocean of water.
Garry's eyes loved to follow the quivering blue expanse that seemed so
cool and deep. It rippled softly away to end in a line of white, like
distant breakers on the horizon's rolling dunes.

This had been the bed of an ocean in some distant past, and that
ancient ocean could never have seemed more real than this; yet Garry
knew that this sea would vanish with the setting sun. He had watched
it often.

* * * * *

A hundred yards farther and he stopped again. It was no well-trodden
path that Garry followed, but he knew his landmarks. There was the big
split rock a half mile ahead, and the three-branched cactus beside it.
But between these and the place where Garry stood was a fan-shaped
sweep of boulders--and this where smooth going had been before.

He forgot for the moment all discomfort. He stood staring under the
hot sun that cast purple shadows beside the weathered rocks, and his
eyes followed up the scarred mountainside.

"That whole ledge that stood out up there--that's gone!" he told
himself. "The whole side of the mountain just shook itself loose...."

Far above, his eyes found another towering mass that reared itself
menacingly. "That will come down next time," he said with conviction,
"and I don't want to be under it when it breaks loose." Then his
searching eyes found the lower ledge and its shattered remains.

It had held a welter of rocks above it as a dam holds the pressure of
water--and the dam had burst. The torrent of stone from above had
swept into motion and carried with it the accumulation of loose rubble
below. Where the ledge had been was now a cliff--a sheer wall of rock.
It had been covered before by the talus that was swept away.

Garry's eyes narrowed to see more plainly under the sun's glare. He
was staring not alone at the cliff but at a shadow within it--a black
shadow in the white face of the cliff itself.

"That was all covered up before," Garry stated; "buried for thousands
of years, I suppose. But it can't be a cave; not a natural one, at
least. There are