bove is worse than this. Devil takes care of
his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and
forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the
trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old
punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with
their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them
there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."

"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in
the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these
precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the
stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese
navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to
save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so
he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"

"About 7,000 feet drop, I think. This is the top of the Pass. We go
down after we leave the precipice! See--? the horses know it! They
are taking their top-turn rest."

The two men glanced below. In the shadowed depths, they could see the
River tearing down a white fume, a pantherine thing leaping--leaping--;
and the hollow roar of water filled the canyon with a quiver that was
tangible. Far below, the eagle flew lazily, lifting and falling to the
throb of the canyon winds. Suddenly, the air was cut by a piercing
whistle. Both men jumped.

"It's only a marmot." The Ranger pointed over his shoulder to the
little gray beast sitting on the face of the rock. "Curious place,
this Pass! There is an echo here--if it were not that we don't want to
announce ourselves, I'd let you hear it. If you yell or sing, you can
hear the thing dancing along that opposite wall--Kind of uncanny, the
echo voice, in the mist here sometimes."

But the whistle of the marmot had also startled the horses. The tired
pack mule gave a hobbling jump and came to a stand. A stone no larger
than a horse-shoe kicked loose, tottered on the edge, and went bounding
over. It struck the tier of rock below with clattering echo, displaced
another stone twice its size, then bounced--bounced--and a slither of
slaty rock the size of a house wrenched out--shot into mid-air with
crash and sharp clappering echoes--Then the Pass was filled with the
thundering roll. They saw it sink--sink--sink and fade, while the echo
still rocketted amid th