join her.

She scrambled up the bench in the canyon floor, gained her feet and
went forward at a rush.

"Steady, Tharon," warned the rider, "you ain't used to climbin'. Save
your wind."

It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day was
broad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung up
the ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thin
intercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she cast
her wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the Canon Country
from her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure.

There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that had
thrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand times
and always it had looked just so--pink and grey and saffron, pale and
misty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and black
as the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows.

Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and then
some necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharon
turned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time to
time Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touched
the soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left a
mark plain as a trail to his trained eyes.

At noon they halted for a little rest. From Tharon's saddle Billy had
taken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meat
in its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly of
the water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might become
more precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterless
pockets of the blind and sliding country.

Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go.
Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to the
left of the steady line she set herself through and above the winding
passes. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign by
which one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he made
was around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires and
faces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut and
weathered by the elements.

"No wonder!" he told himself, "that the Indians call it the Enchanted
Land!"

"We'll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy," Tharon told him confidently,
"an' over it lies God's Cup. There's water there--an' Kenset."

"What makes