sented.
Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen
thunder of the river. The river was low, too, for otherwise there would
have been a deafening roar.

Presently she came out upon a lower branch of the canyon, into a great
red-walled space, with the river still a thousand feet below, and the
cliffs towering as high above her. The road led down along this rim
where to the left all was open, across to the split and peaked wall
opposite. The river appeared to sweep round a bold, bulging corner a
mile above. It was a wide, swift, muddy, turbulent stream. A great bar
of sand stretched out from the shore. Beyond it, through the mouth of
an intersecting canyon, could be seen a clump of cottonwoods and
willows that marked the home of the Creeches. Lucy could not see the
shore nearest her, as it was almost directly under her. Besides, in
this narrow road, on a spirited horse, she was not inclined to watch
the scenery. She hurried Sarchedon down and down, under the overhanging
brows of rock, to where the rim sloped out and failed. Here was a
half-acre of sand, with a few scant willows, set down seemingly in a
dent at the base of the giant, beetling cliffs. The place was light,
though the light seemed a kind of veiled red, and to Lucy always
ghastly. She could not have been joyous with that river moaning before
her, even if it had been up on a level, in the clear and open day. As a
little girl eight years old she had conceived a terror and hatred of
this huge, jagged rent so full of red haze and purple smoke and the
thunder of rushing waters. And she had never wholly outgrown it. The
joy of the sun and wind, the rapture in the boundless open, the
sweetness in the sage--these were not possible here. Something mighty
and ponderous, heavy as those colossal cliffs, weighted down her
spirit. The voice of the river drove out any dream. Here was the
incessant frowning presence of destructive forces of nature. And the
ford was associated with catastrophe--to sheep, to horses and to men.

Lucy rode across the bar to the shore where the Indians were loading
the sheep into an immense rude flatboat. As the sheep were frightened,
the loading was no easy task. Their bleating could be heard above the
roar of the river. Bostil's boatmen, Shugrue and Somers, stood
knee-deep in the quicksand of the bar, and their efforts to keep
free-footed were as strenuous as their handling of the sheep. Presently
the flock was all crowde