Jorth and all that seemed promising or menacing in his father's
letter could never change the Indian in Jean. So he thought. Hard
upon that conclusion rushed another--one which troubled with its
stinging revelation. Surely these influences he had defied were just
the ones to bring out in him the Indian he had sensed but had never
known. The eventful day had brought new and bitter food for Jean to
reflect upon.

The trail landed him in the bowlder-strewn bed of a wide canyon, where
the huge trees stretched a canopy of foliage which denied the sunlight,
and where a beautiful brook rushed and foamed. Here at last Jean
tasted water that rivaled his Oregon springs. "Ah," he cried, "that
sure is good!" Dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this streamway;
and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly
bear to the tiny, birdlike imprints of a squirrel. Jean heard familiar
sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels
was incessant. This fragrant, cool retreat under the Rim brought back
to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests. After all, Jean felt that
he would not miss anything that he had loved in the Cascades. But what
was the vague sense of all not being well with him--the essence of a
faint regret--the insistence of a hovering shadow? And then flashed
again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of
eyes, of lips--of something he had to forget.

Wild and broken as this rolling Basin floor had appeared from the Rim,
the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of
distance. Down here all was on a big, rough, broken scale. Jean did
not find even a few rods of level ground. Bowlders as huge as houses
obstructed the stream bed; spruce trees eight feet thick tried to lord
it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a veritable canyon from which
occasional glimpses through the foliage showed the Rim as a lofty
red-tipped mountain peak.

Jean's pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear or lion and ran
off down the rough trail, imperiling Jean's outfit. It was not an easy
task to head him off nor, when that was accomplished, to keep him to a
trot. But his fright and succeeding skittishness at least made for
fast traveling. Jean calculated that he covered ten miles under the
Rim before the character of ground and forest began to change.

The trail had turned southeast. Instead of gorge after gorge,
red-walled and