You need to learn these things. I could put
all this outfit on two burros, but the trail is narrow, and a wide
pack might bump a burro off. Let's see, I've got all your stuff but
the saddle; that we'll leave till we get a horse for you. Well, all's
ready."

Mescal came at his call and, mounting Black Bolly, rode out toward the
cliff wall, with Wolf trotting before her. Hare bestrode Noddle. August,
waving good-bye to his women-folk, started the train of burros after
Mescal.

How they would be able to climb the face of that steep cliff puzzled
Hare. Upon nearer view he discovered the yard-wide trail curving upward
in cork-screw fashion round a projecting corner of cliff. The stone was
a soft red shale, and the trail had been cut in it at a steep angle. It
was so steep that the burros appeared to be climbing straight up. Noddle
pattered into it, dropped his head and his long ears and slackened his
pace to patient plodding. August walked in the rear.

The first thing that struck Hare was the way the burros in front of him
stopped at the curves in the trail, and turned in a space so small that
their four feet were close together; yet as they swung their packs they
scarcely scraped the wall. At every turn they were higher than he was,
going in the opposite direction, yet he could reach out and touch them.
He glanced up to see Mescal right above him, leaning forward with her
brown hands clasping the pommel. Then he looked out and down; already
the green cluster of cottonwoods lay far below. After that sensations
pressed upon him. Round and round, up and up, steadily, surely, the
beautiful mustang led the train; there were sounds of rattling stones,
and click of hoofs, and scrape of pack. On one side towered the
iron-stained cliff, not smooth or glistening at close range, but of
dull, dead, rotting rock. The trail changed to a zigzag along a seamed
and cracked buttress where ledges leaned outward waiting to fall. Then
a steeper incline, where the burros crept upward warily, led to a level
ledge heading to the left.

Mescal halted on a promontory. She, with her windblown hair, the gleam
of white band about her head, and a dash of red along the fringed
leggings, gave inexpressible life and beauty to that wild, jagged point
of rock, sharp against the glaring sky.

"This is Lookout Point," said Naab. "I keep an Indian here all the time
during daylight. He's a peon, a Navajo slave. He can't talk, as he was
born without a ton