ou can
eat? You're better? You'll get over it?"

"Sure. Why, carbolic acid never phases me. I've often used it for
rattlesnake bites. I did not tell you, but that rattler at the cabin
last night actually bit me, and I used carbolic to cure the poison."

Frank mumbled something about horses, and faded into the gloom. As for
Jones, he looked at me rather incredulously, and the absolute, almost
childish gladness he manifested because I had been snatched from the
grave, made me regret my deceit, and satisfied me forever on one score.

On awakening in the morning I found frost half an inch thick covered my
sleeping-bag, whitened the ground, and made the beautiful silver spruce
trees silver in hue as well as in name.

We were getting ready for an early start, when two riders, with
pack-horses jogging after them, came down the trail from the direction
of Oak Spring. They proved to be Jeff Clarke, the wild-horse wrangler
mentioned by the Stewarts, and his helper. They were on the way into
the breaks for a string of pintos. Clarke was a short, heavily bearded
man, of jovial aspect. He said he had met the Stewarts going into
Fredonia, and being advised of our destination, had hurried to come up
with us. As we did not know, except in a general way, where we were
making for, the meeting was a fortunate event.

Our camping site had been close to the divide made by one of the long,
wooded ridges sent off by Buckskin Mountain, and soon we were
descending again. We rode half a mile down a timbered slope, and then
out into a beautiful, flat forest of gigantic pines. Clarke informed us
it was a level bench some ten miles long, running out from the slopes
of Buckskin to face the Grand Canyon on the south, and the 'breaks of
the Siwash on the west. For two hours we rode between the stately lines
of trees, and the hoofs of the horses gave forth no sound. A long,
silvery grass, sprinkled with smiling bluebells, covered the ground,
except close under the pines, where soft red mats invited lounging and
rest. We saw numerous deer, great gray mule deer, almost as large as
elk. Jones said they had been crossed with elk once, which accounted
for their size. I did not see a stump, or a burned tree, or a windfall
during the ride.

Clarke led us to the rim of the canyon. Without any preparation--for
the giant trees hid the open sky--we rode right out to the edge of the
tremendous chasm. At first I did not seem to think; my faculties were
benum