him. "Come on, Frank. If they
don't diskiver the trick till we've got time to speed up the clift, then
thar's still a chance for us. Come on, an' keep close arter me!"

Hamersley went, without saying a word. He knew that Wilder, well known
and long trusted, had a reason for everything he did. It was not the
time to question him, or discuss the prudence of the step he was taking.
There might be danger before, but there was death--sure death--behind
them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A DESCENT INTO DARKNESS.

In less than a dozen paces from its entrance the chine opened into a
wider space, again closing like a pair of callipers. It was a hollow of
elliptical shape--resembling an old-fashioned butterboat scooped out of
the solid rock, on all sides precipitous, except at its upper end. Here
a ravine, sloping down from the summit-level above, would to the
geologist at once proclaim the secret of its formation. Not so easily
explained might seem the narrow outlet to the open plain. But one
skilled in the testimony of the rocks would detect certain ferruginous
veins in the sandstone that, refusing to yield to the erosion of the
running stream, had stood for countless ages.

Neither Walt Wilder nor the young Kentuckian gave thought to such
scientific speculations as they retreated through the narrow gap and
back into the wider gorge. All they knew or cared for was that a gully
at the opposite end was seen to slope upward, promising a path to the
plain above.

In sixty seconds they were in it, toiling onward and upward amidst a
chaos of rocks where no horse could follow--loose boulders that looked
as if hurled down from the heavens above or belched upward from the
bowels of the earth.

The retreat of the fugitives up the ravine, like their dash out of the
enclosed corral, was still but a doubtful effort. Neither of them had
full confidence of being able eventually to escape. It was like the
wounded squirrel clutching at the last tiny twig of a tree, however
unable to support it. They were not quite certain that the sloping
gorge would give them a path to the upper plain; for Wilder had only a
doubtful recollection of what some trapper had told him. But even if it
did, the Indians, expert climbers as they were, would soon be after
them, close upon their heels. The ruse could not remain long
undetected.

They had plunged into the chasm as drowning men grasp at the nearest
thing afloat--a slender branch or bunch