d myself that I was
a man grown, twenty-five years old, and that I must not merely seem like
one, but feel like one. "You're not afraid of the dark, I suppose?" This
I uttered aloud, unwittingly.

"What's that?"

I started; but it was only the Virginian behind me. "Oh, nothing. The
air is getting colder up here."

I had presently a great relief. We came to a place where again this
trail mounted so abruptly that we once more got off to lead our
horses. So likewise had our predecessors done; and as I watched the two
different sets of footprints, I observed something and hastened to speak
of it.

"One man is much heavier than the other."

"I was hoping I'd not have to tell you that," said the Virginian.

"You're always ahead of me! Well, still my education is progressing."

"Why, yes. You'll equal an Injun if you keep on."

It was good to be facetious; and I smiled to myself as I trudged upward.
We came off the steep place, leaving the canyon beneath us, and took to
horseback. And as we proceeded over the final gentle slant up to the
rim of the great basin that was set among the peaks, the Virginian was
jocular once more.

"Pounds has got on," said he, "and Ounces is walking."

I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he nodded as he fixed the
weather-beaten crimson handkerchief round his neck. Then he threw
a stone at a pack animal that was delaying on the trail. "Damn your
buckskin hide," he drawled. "You can view the scenery from the top."

He was so natural, sitting loose in the saddle, and cursing in his
gentle voice, that I laughed to think what visions I had been harboring.
The two dead men riding one horse through the mountains vanished, and I
came back to every day.

"Do you think we'll catch up with those people?" I asked.

"Not likely. They're travelling about the same gait we are."

"Ounces ought to be the best walker."

"Up hill, yes. But Pounds will go down a-foggin'."

We gained the rim of the basin. It lay below us, a great cup of
country,--rocks, woods, opens, and streams. The tall peaks rose like
spires around it, magnificent and bare in the last of the sun; and we
surveyed this upper world, letting our animals get breath. Our bleak,
crumbled rim ran like a rampart between the towering tops, a half circle
of five miles or six, very wide in some parts, and in some shrinking to
a scanty foothold, as here. Here our trail crossed over it between two
eroded and fantastic shapes of stone, like