d packed. And soon
all was in readiness for the flight. Fay was given Nack-yal, Jane the
saddled horse Shefford had ridden, and Lassiter the Indian's roan.
Shefford and Nas Ta Bega were to ride the blanketed mustangs, and the
sixth and last one bore the pack. Nas Ta Bega set off, leading this
horse; the others of the party lined in behind, with Shefford at the
rear.

Nas Ta Bega led at a brisk trot, and sometimes, on level stretches of
ground, at an easy canter; and Shefford had a grim realization of
what this flight was going to be for these three fugitives, now so
unaccustomed to riding. Jane and Lassiter, however, needed no watching,
and showed they had never forgotten how to manage a horse. The Indian
back-trailed yesterday's path for an hour, then headed west to the left,
and entered a low pass. All parts of this plateau country looked alike,
and Shefford was at some pains to tell the difference of this strange
ground from that which he had been over. In another hour they got out
of the rugged, broken rock to the wind-worn and smooth, shallow canyon.
Shefford calculated that they were coming to the end of the plateau.
The low walls slanted lower; the canyon made a turn; Nas Ta Bega
disappeared; and then the others of the party. When Shefford turned the
corner of wall he saw a short strip of bare, rocky ground with only sky
beyond. The Indian and his followers had halted in a group. Shefford
rode to them, halted himself, and in one sweeping glance realized the
meaning of their silent gaze. But immediately Nas Ta Bega started
down; and the mustangs, without word or touch, followed him. Shefford,
however, lingered on the promontory.

His gaze seemed impelled and held by things afar--the great
yellow-and-purple corrugated world of distance, now on a level with
his eyes. He was drawn by the beauty and the grandeur of that scene and
transfixed by the realization that he had dared to venture to find a
way through this vast, wild, and upflung fastness. He kept looking afar,
sweeping the three-quartered circle of horizon till his judgment of
distance was confounded and his sense of proportion dwarfed one moment
and magnified the next. Then he withdrew his fascinated gaze to adopt
the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the desert--to look
with slow, contracted eyes from near to far.

His companions had begun to zigzag down a long slope, bare of rock, with
yellow gravel patches showing between the scant strips