above, and from some deep and
tremendous abyss breathed the winds of space.

It was as dark as a cave, for the moon was yet two hours below the
horizon. Somehow the trail turned to the right along that tremendous
cliff. We thought we could make out its direction, the dimness of its
glimmering; but equally well, after we had looked a moment, we could
imagine it one way or another, to right and left. I went ahead to
investigate. The trail to left proved to be the faint reflection of a
clump of "old man" at least five hundred feet down; that to right was a
burned patch sheer against the rise of the cliff. We started on the
middle way.

There were turns-in where a continuance straight ahead would require an
airship or a coroner; again turns-out where the direct line would
telescope you against the state of California. These we could make out
by straining our eyes. The horses plunged and snorted; the buckboard
leaped. Fire flashed from the impact of steel against rock,
momentarily blinding us to what we should see. Always we descended
into the velvet blackness of the abyss, the canon walls rising steadily
above us shutting out even the dim illumination of the stars. From
time to time our driver, desperately scared, jerked out cheering bits
of information.

"My eyes ain't what they was. For the Lord's sake keep a-lookin',
boys."

"That nigh hoss is deef. There don't seem to be no use saying WHOA to
her."

"Them brakes don't hold fer sour peanuts. I been figgerin' on tackin'
on a new shoe for a week."

"I never was over this road but onct, and then I was headed th' other
way. I was driving of a corpse."

Then, after two hours of it, BING! BANG! SMASH! our tongue collided
with a sheer black wall, no blacker than the atmosphere before it. The
trail here took a sharp V turn to the left. We had left the face of
the precipice and henceforward would descend the bed of the canon.
Fortunately our collision had done damage to nothing but our nerves, so
we proceeded to do so.

The walls of the crevice rose thousands of feet above us. They seemed
to close together, like the sides of a tent, to leave only a narrow
pale lucent strip of sky. The trail was quite invisible, and even the
sense of its existence was lost when we traversed groves of trees. One
of us had to run ahead of the horses, determining its general
direction, locating the sharper turns. The rest depended on the
instinct of the horses and pur