rail of the two men.
Up the larger canyon a little way they saw buzzards flying low and
heavily.

"That looks as if one of 'em was dead," said Nick.

"It would be just like the scrubs," Tom grumbled, "for both of 'em to
go and die before we get a pop at 'em. I want to see the color of
their hair just once. Confound their measly skins, they might have got
Emerson into a worse scrape than this Whittaker business."

They were both silent for some moments, watching the buzzards as they
swooped low over some dark object on the floor of the canyon. As they
came nearer they saw that the dead thing on which the birds were
feeding was the missing horse.

"They killed it for meat," said Nick, pointing to a clean cut which
had severed one hind leg from the body.

"Yes, and not so very long ago, either," Tom assented, "or the
buzzards wouldn't have left this much flesh on it, and it would be
dried up more."

"Say, Tom, they brought this beast up here to kill it, and they sure
wouldn't have brought it so far away if they had wanted the meat down
there in that canyon. They must have changed camp."

"Then there's water higher up. They're in here yet, Nick, and we'll
find 'em. We must keep our eyes and ears peeled, so they can't get the
first pop."

They picked their way carefully up the canyon, watching the gorge that
lengthened beyond them and the walls that towered above their heads,
listening constantly for the faintest sounds of human voice or foot,
speaking rarely and always in a whisper. The floor of the canyon was
strewn with boulders large and small, and its sides rose above them in
rugged, barren, precipitous cliffs. Nowhere did they see the slightest
sign of vegetation to relieve the wilderness of sand and rock and
barren walls. Not even a single grass blade thrust a brave green head
between forbidding stones. Above them was a sky of pure, brilliant
blue, and around them was the gray of the everlasting granite. Except
for the sound of their own footsteps, the canyon was absolutely
silent. There was no call of animals one to another, or twitter of
birds, or whirr of feathered wings, or piping of insects. Now and
then a slender, graceful lizard darted silently out of the sunshine
to hide beneath a stone, and far behind them in the canyon the
buzzards wheeled in low, awkward flights above the carcass of the dead
horse. But aside from these no living creature was to be seen.

The sun shone squarely down upon the cany