hin half a mile of the Devil's
Slide, which is the only way down into Lot's Canyon. Boys, we should be
in Lot's Canyon in two hours!"

"Hurrah!" yelled Thure.

"Hurrah!" echoed Bud.

"Come on," cried Mr. Conroyal. "The sooner we get there the better.
Pedro, see if you can't liven up them pack-horses a little."

"Si, si, senor," and Pedro began hurling volleys of Mexican oaths at the
pack-horses and running from one to another of them, striking with his
whip and urging with his voice, until the patient animals were moving as
fast as the safety of their packs would permit.

Pedro appeared to be in unusually good spirits that day. All the gloom
of the day before had vanished with the dawning of the morning of the
night of the hooting owl.

In an hour and a half, so eagerly did they press forward, our little
company had passed the steeple-like pinnacle of rocks; and in another
fifteen minutes they had climbed to the top of a ridge of rocks, and
were looking down a steep, narrow declivity, cut by the wonderous hand
of nature, in a precipitous wall of solid rock that rose from the bottom
of a canyon five hundred feet below them. The smooth floor of the
declivity was not over a dozen feet wide and shot downward at an angle
of about forty-five degrees.

"Gosh! I don't wonder Stackpole called that Th' Devil's Slide," and
Ham's eyes stared down the steep slope of the declivity. "Ain't thar no
other way of gettin' down thar intew that thar canyon?" and he turned to
Dickson.

"Not that I know of," Dickson answered. "That was the way Stackpole and
I went. It is not as difficult as it looks. The rock is not slippery,
and, by being careful, a man can get down all right. But the horses! I
don't know about them," and he glanced a little dubiously toward the six
horses.

"We'll have to use ropes on them," declared Mr. Conroyal. "Two men to a
horse. Get out the ropes."

In a few minutes five strong ropes had been secured from the packs, and
preparations were immediately begun for helping the horses down the
slide.

There were ten men in the company, including Pedro, and this enabled
them to start all the pack-horses at the same time down the declivity.
The method of procedure was simple. The middle of a strong rope some
thirty feet long was placed under the neck of a horse and across the
breast and fastened there, so that it could not slip down. Then two men
took hold of the rope, one at each end, and, by walking a little b