"Wait a bit, and you
will see that the Indians can be beaten off as easily as possible, and
they'll soon be afraid to attack us when they find how strong we are.
Perhaps they'll be glad to make friends. Now, come and have a look
round."

Joses obeyed his young leader, shouldering his rifle, and following him
in a surly, ill-used sort of way, resenting everything that was
introduced to his notice as being poor and unsatisfactory.

"Glad to see trees up here, Master Bart," he said, as the lad made a
remark, by a patch whose verdure was a pleasant relief to the eye after
the glare from the bare rock. "I don't call them scrubs of things
trees. Why, a good puff of wind would blow them off here and down into
the plain."

"Then why hasn't a good puff of wind blown them off and down into the
plain?" said Bart.

"Why haven't they been blown off--why haven't they been blown off,
Master Bart? Well, I suppose because the wind hasn't blowed hard
enough."

Bart laughed, and they went on along the edge of the tremendous cliff
till they came above the canyon, down into which Bart, never seemed
weary of gazing. For the place had quite a fascination for him, with
its swift, sparkling river, beautiful wooded islands, and green and
varied shores. The sides of the place, too, were so wondrously
picturesque; here were weather-stained rocks of fifty different tints;
there covered with lovely creepers, hanging in festoons or clinging
close to the stony crevices that veined the rocky face in every
direction. The shelves and ledges and mossy nooks were innumerable, and
every one, even at that great height, wore a tempting look that drew the
lad towards it, and made him itch to begin the exploration.

"What a lovely river, Joses!" he cried.

"Lovely? Why, it's one o' those sand rivers. Don't you ever go into it
if we get down there; you'd be sucked into the quicksands before you
knew where you were. I don't think much of this place, Master Bart."

"I do," cried the lad, stooping to pick up a rough fragment of stone,
and then, as it was long and thin, breaking it against the edge of a
piece of rock, when the newly-fractured end shone brightly in the sun
with a metallic sheen.

"Why, there is plenty of silver up here, Joses," he said, examining the
stone intently. "This is silver, is it not?"

Joses took the piece of stone in an ill-used way, examined it carefully,
and with a sour expression of countenance, as if he were g