She was young, she was friendless,
she was human. By this hand in his Jean felt more than ever the
loneliness of her. Then, just as he was about to speak again, she
pulled her hand free.

"Heah's the Rim," she said, in her quaint Southern drawl. "An' there's
Y'ur Tonto Basin."

Jean had been intent only upon the girl. He had kept step beside her
without taking note of what was ahead of him. At her words he looked
up expectantly, to be struck mute.

He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath
him. As he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the
darkest and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue
distance across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the
sky. It seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by
bold, undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a wall so high that
he felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky.

"Southeast y'u see the Sierra Anchas," said the girl pointing. "That
notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to Phoenix an'
Maricopa. Those big rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals.
Round to the west is the Four Peaks Range. An' y'u're standin' on the
Rim."

Jean could not see at first just what the Rim was, but by shifting his
gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature. For
leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow wall, a rampart, a
mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward. Grand and bold were
the promontories reaching out over the void. They ran toward the
westering sun. Sweeping and impressive were the long lines slanting
away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into the black
timber. Jean had never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of
nature's depths and upheavals. He was held mute.

"Stranger, look down," said the girl.

Jean's sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances.
This wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that
it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged
into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into gorges
choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing waters.
Slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into canyon--so
the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a
wilderness across which travel seemed impossible.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Jean.

"Indeed it is!" murmured the girl. "Shore tha