pick our way over the
rough boulders of the dry stream-bed.

Our advance was slow, for it had to be made with the utmost caution.
Thornton, Cress, and Tomas scouted afoot, one in the bottom of the
gorge, and one half-way up each of its side walls, while Manuel and
Crawford followed two hundred yards behind them, also afoot, driving
the saddle and pack horses; and I trailed two hundred yards behind the
horses, watching for any sign of an attempted surprise from the rear.
Thus scattered, we gave them no chance to bowl over several of us at
the first fire from any ambush they might have arranged.

From the windings of the canon we were out of sight of each other much
of the time; personally, I recall that afternoon as one of the most
lonely and uncomfortable I ever passed. I slipped watchfully along,
stopping often to listen, eyes sweeping the hillsides and the gulch
below me, searching every tree and boulder, with no sound but the
soughing of the wind through the tree-tops, and an occasional soft
clatter of shingle beneath the slipping hoofs of my unshod horse.

But throughout the afternoon the only sign of man or beast that I saw
was a lot of sotol plants recently uprooted, and their roots eaten by
bears.

Shortly after dark we reached the only permanent water in the canon, a
clear, cold, sweet spring, bursting out from beneath a rock, only to
sink immediately into the arid sands of the dry stream-bed.
Immediately below the spring and midway of the gorge bottom stood an
island-like uplift, twenty yards in length by ten in width, covered
with brush, leaving on either side a narrow, rocky channel, and from
either side of these two channels the canon walls, heavily timbered,
rose very steeply. Just above these narrows, the gorge widened into
seven or eight acres of level, park-like, well-grassed benchland, and
into this little park we turned our horses loose for the night, for
they were too worn to stray.

Having made eight or ten miles up the canon during the afternoon march,
we were now within a mile of the summit, and no more than seven miles
from Musquiz. Indeed we should have tried to reach the town that night
had not Tomas told us the next three miles of the trail were so steep
and rough he could not undertake to fetch us over it unless we
abandoned our animals, saddles, and packs.

We turned into our blankets early, after a cold supper, for we did not
care to chance a fire. Cress and I slept together in t