a bone now. It was sure to become dark early
in such a chasm as that, and there was no telling how much need there
might be for seeing the way. On went the young explorer until he came to
a point where the chasm suddenly widened. It was a gloomy sort of hollow
and littered with fragments of trees, drift-wood of old torrents.

"Camp," said Two Arrows to One-eye. "Make fire."

If a dog could use flint and steel, no doubt One-eye would have obeyed;
as it was, Two Arrows had to attend to that business for himself, and it
was not long before a great blazing fire of mountain pine was throwing
flashes of magnificent light upon the mighty precipices in all
directions. The gray granite stood out like shadows, and the white
quartz glittered marvellously, but the Nez Perce boy had no time to
admire them. He had his supper to cook and eat, and he had found some
water in a hollow of the rocks; no sunshine hot enough to dry it up had
ever found its way down there. Then drift-wood was gathered to keep some
sort of a blaze burning all night. There was no danger from human
enemies in that utter solitude, but there were wild beasts among the
mountains; night would be their prowling-time, and not one among them
would venture too near a fire.

Two Arrows was well entitled to a sound sleep, and he had one; when he
awoke, in the earliest gray of the next morning, the world was in fair
daylight everywhere outside of that deep crack in the mountains. He ate
heartily and at once pushed on, determined to have some fresh game
before night if possible. Such thoughts as he sent back to the Nez Perce
camp did not include the idea that it was already breaking up to follow
him; still less did he have any imagination of thirsty white people
toiling across a waterless plain along that buffalo trail.

He was in no danger of losing the way, for his path was walled in for
him. Towards midday it ceased to go up, up, up, and the chasm widened
into a great rocky canon of wonderful ruggedness and beauty. Two Arrows
had been among the mountains before, in other ranges, and this seemed to
him very much like what he might have expected. Now, however, the trail
turned to the right and picked its way along the steep side of the
varying slopes. Here it was wider and there it was narrower, until it
came to a reach of natural roadway that even a bison must have hunted
for before he found it. Away up it went in zigzags, seeming to take
skilful advantage of every na