alls, and
here the trail evidently followed the stream bed. There was no other
way. Slone waded in, and stumbled, rolled, and floated ahead of the
sturdy horse. Nagger was wet to his breast, but he did not fall. This
gulch seemed full of a hollow rushing roar. It opened out into a wide
valley. And Wildfire's tracks took to the left side and began to climb
the slope.

Here the traveling was good, considering what had been passed. Once up
out of the valley floor Slone saw Wildfire far ahead, high on the slope.
He did not appear to be limping, but he was not going fast. Slone
watched as he climbed. What and where would be the end of this chase?

Sometimes Wildfire was plain in his sight for a moment, but usually he
was hidden by rocks. The slope was one great talus, a jumble of
weathered rock, fallen from what appeared a mountain of red and yellow
wall. Here the heat of the sun fell upon him like fire. The rocks were
so hot Slone could not touch them with bare hand. The close of the
afternoon was approaching, and this slope was interminably long. Still,
it was not steep, and the trail was good.

At last from the height of slope Wildfire appeared, looking back and
down. Then he was gone. Slone plodded upward. Long before he reached
that summit he heard the dull rumble of the river. It grew to be a roar,
yet it seemed distant. Would the great desert river stop Wildfire in his
flight? Slone doubted it. He surmounted the ridge, to find the canyon
opening in a tremendous gap, and to see down, far down, a glittering,
sun-blasted slope merging into a deep, black gulch where a red river
swept and chafed and roared.

Somehow the river was what he had expected to see. A force that had cut
and ground this canyon could have been nothing but a river like that. The
trail led down, and Slone had no doubt that it crossed the river and led
up out of the canyon. He wanted to stay there and gaze endlessly and
listen. At length he began the descent. As he proceeded it seemed that
the roar of the river lessened. He could not understand why this was so.
It took half an hour to reach the last level, a ghastly, black, and
iron-ribbed canyon bed, with the river splitting it. He had not had a
glimpse of Wildfire on this side of the divide, but he found his tracks,
and they led down off the last level, through a notch in the black bank
of marble to a sand bar and the river.

Wildfire had walked straight off the sand into the water. Slone studie