ague-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry
red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and
desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond.

All day Shefford had plodded onward with the clear horizon-line a thing
unattainable; and for days before that he had ridden the wild bare flats
and climbed the rocky desert benches. The great colored reaches and
steps had led endlessly onward and upward through dim and deceiving
distance.

A hundred miles of desert travel, with its mistakes and lessons and
intimations, had not prepared him for what he now saw. He beheld what
seemed a world that knew only magnitude. Wonder and awe fixed his gaze,
and thought remained aloof. Then that dark and unknown northland flung
a menace at him. An irresistible call had drawn him to this seamed and
peaked border of Arizona, this broken battlemented wilderness of Utah
upland; and at first sight they frowned upon him, as if to warn him not
to search for what lay hidden beyond the ranges. But Shefford thrilled
with both fear and exultation. That was the country which had been
described to him. Far across the red valley, far beyond the ragged line
of black mesa and yellow range, lay the wild canyon with its haunting
secret.

Red Lake must be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek,
to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be always
haunted. A friend's strange story had prompted his singular journey; a
beautiful rainbow with its mystery and promise had decided him. Once in
his life he had answered a wild call to the kingdom of adventure
within him, and once in his life he had been happy. But here in the
horizon-wide face of that up-flung and cloven desert he grew cold; he
faltered even while he felt more fatally drawn.

As if impelled Shefford started his horse down the sandy trail, but he
checked his former far-reaching gaze. It was the month of April, and the
waning sun lost heat and brightness. Long shadows crept down the slope
ahead of him and the scant sage deepened its gray. He watched the
lizards shoot like brown streaks across the sand, leaving their slender
tracks; he heard the rustle of pack-rats as they darted into their
brushy homes; the whir of a low-sailing hawk startled his horse.

Like ocean waves the slope rose and fell, its hollows choked with sand,
its ridge-tops showing scantier growth of sage and grass and weed. The
last ridge was a