allen from the cliff
above, split off by some titanic agony of nature. Up and up we went, our
ponies stumbling now and then, but almost as surefooted as men, as they
climbed the narrow way. Now the rocks hid us from the plain as we crept
sturdily through narrow crevices, and now we clambered up an open path
where nothing concealed our way. But higher still and higher, foot, by
foot we pressed, while with oath and growl behind us came our pursuers.

At last we could ride no farther, and the miracle was that our ponies
could have climbed so far. Above us huge slabs of stone, by some
internal cataclysm hurled into fragments of unguessed tons of weight,
seemed poised in air, about to topple down upon the plain below. Between
these wild, irregular masses a narrow footing zigzagged upward to still
other wild, irregular masses, a footing of long leaps in cramped spaces
between sharp edges of upright clefts, all gigantic, unbending, now
shielding by their immense angles, now standing sheer and stark before
us, casting no shadows to cover us from the great white glare of the
New-Mexican day.

I have said no man knows where his mind will run in moments of peril. As
we left our ponies and clambered up and up in hope of safety somewhere,
the face of the rocks cut and carved by the rude stone tools of a race
long perished, seemed to hold groups of living things staring at us and
pointing the way. And there was no end to these crude pictographs. Over
and over and over--the human hand, the track of the little road-runner
bird, the plumed serpent coiled or in waving line, the human form with
the square body and round head, with staring circles for eyes and mouth,
and straight-line limbs.

We were fleeing for safety through the sacred aisles of a people God had
made; and when they served His purpose no longer, they had perished. I
did not think of them so that morning. I thought only of some
hiding-place, some inaccessible point where nothing could reach the girl
I must protect. But these crawling serpents, cut in the rock surfaces,
crawled on and on. These human hands, poor detached hands, were lifted
up in mute token of what had gone before. These two-eyed, one-mouthed
circles on heads fast to body-boxes, from which waved tentacle limbs,
jigged by us, to give place to other coiled or crawling serpents and
their companion carvings, with the track of the swift road-runner
skipping by us everywhere.

At last, with bleeding hands and