p red. Four hours of
turning and twisting, endlessly down and down, over boulders and banks
and every conceivable roughness of earth and rock, finished the
pack-mustang; and Slone mercifully left him in a long reach of canyon
where grass and water never failed. In this place Slone halted for the
noon hour, letting Nagger have his fill of the rich grazing. Nagger's
three days in grassy upland, despite the continuous travel by day, had
improved him. He looked fat, and Slone had not yet caught the horse
resting. Nagger was iron to endure. Here Slone left all the outfit
except what was on his saddle, and the sack containing the few pounds
of meat and supplies, and the two utensils. This sack he tied on the
back of his saddle, and resumed his journey.

Presently he came to a place where Wildfire had doubled on his trail
and had turned up a side canyon. The climb out was hard on Slone, if
not on Nagger. Once up, Slone found himself upon a wide, barren plateau
of glaring red rock and clumps of greasewood and cactus. The plateau
was miles wide, shut in by great walls and mesas of colored rock. The
afternoon sun beat down fiercely. A blast of wind, as if from a
furnace, swept across the plateau, and it was laden with red dust.
Slone walked here, where he could have ridden. And he made several
miles of up-and-down progress over this rough plateau. The great walls
of the opposite side of the canyon loomed appreciably closer. What,
Slone wondered, was at the bottom of this rent in the earth? The great
desert river was down there, of course, but he knew nothing of it.
Would that turn back Wildfire? Slone thought grimly how he had always
claimed Nagger to be part fish and part bird. Wildfire was not going to
escape.

By and by only isolated mescal plants with long, yellow-plumed spears
broke the bare monotony of the plateau. And Slone passed from red sand
and gravel to a red, soft shale, and from that to hard, red rock. Here
Wildfire's tracks were lost, the first time in seven weeks. But Slone
had his direction down that plateau with the cleavage lines of canyons
to right and left. At times Slone found a vestige of the old Indian
trail, and this made him doubly sure of being right. He did not need to
have Wildfire's tracks. He let Nagger pick the way, and the horse made
no mistake in finding the line of least resistance. But that grew
harder and harder. This bare rock, like a file, would soon wear
Wildfire's hoofs thin. And Slone r