rip he
turned to the left and wended his skulking way southward a mile or more
to the opening of the valley, where lay the strange scrawled rocks. He
did not, however, venture boldly out into the open sage, but clung to
the right-hand wall and went along that till its perpendicular line
broke into the long incline of bare stone.

Before proceeding farther he halted, studying the strange character of
this slope and realizing that a moving black object could be seen far
against such background. Before him ascended a gradual swell of smooth
stone. It was hard, polished, and full of pockets worn by centuries
of eddying rain-water. A hundred yards up began a line of grotesque
cedar-trees, and they extended along the slope clear to its most
southerly end. Beyond that end Venters wanted to get, and he concluded
the cedars, few as they were, would afford some cover.

Therefore he climbed swiftly. The trees were farther up than he
had estimated, though he had from long habit made allowance for the
deceiving nature of distances in that country. When he gained the cover
of cedars he paused to rest and look, and it was then he saw how the
trees sprang from holes in the bare rock. Ages of rain had run down the
slope, circling, eddying in depressions, wearing deep round holes.
There had been dry seasons, accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds, and
cedars rose wonderfully out of solid rock. But these were not beautiful
cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as if growth
were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old. Theirs had
been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for them. This
country was hard on trees--and men.

He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open
valley. As he progressed, the belt of trees widened and he kept to its
upper margin. He passed shady pockets half full of water, and, as he
marked the location for possible future need, he reflected that there
had been no rain since the winter snows. From one of these shady holes a
rabbit hopped out and squatted down, laying its ears flat.

Venters wanted fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to
think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off
a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to
flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and
he never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some
covert. So after a caref