Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping and creeping along the bottom of the ravine.  Then I ran myself to reach a point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I might get a shot.  But I did not see them, and nothing happened.  I lost sight of the turkeys.  Hurrying back to where I had tied my horse I mounted him and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine some distance above.  Here I hunted around for a little while.  Once I heard the report of the .20 gauge, and then several rifle shots.  Upon returning I found that Lee and Nielsen had wasted some shells.  R.C. and Romer came wagging up the hill, both red and wet and tired.  R.C. carried a small turkey, about the size of a chicken.  He told me, between pants, that they chased the four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a hen-turkey with a flock of young ones.  They ran every way.  He got one.  Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching several.  Romer said for himself:  “I just almost pulled feathers out of their tails.  Gee! if I’d had a gun!”

We resumed our journey.  About the middle of the afternoon Doyle called my attention to an opening in the forest through which I could see the yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the great blue void below.  Arizona!  That explained the black forests, the red and yellow cliffs of rock, the gray cedars, the heights and depths.

Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa.  The road was winding, rough full of loose rocks and dusty.  We were all tired out trying to keep up with the wagon.  Romer, however, averred time and again that he was not tired.  Still I saw him often shift his seat from one side of the saddle to the other.

At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little hamlet.  Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards, and many rosy-cheeked children.  We lingered there long enough to rest a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water.  I would travel out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.

About five o’clock we left for the Natural Bridge.  Romer invited or rather taunted me to a race.  When it ended in his victory I found that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath.  I went back some distance to look for it, but did so in vain.  Isbel said he would ride back in the morning and find it.

The country here appeared to be on a vast scale.  But that was only because we had gotten out where we could see all around.  Arizona is all on a grand, vast scale.  Mountain ranges stood up to the south and east.  North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber.  Westward lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills.  The valley appeared a kind of magnificent bowl, rough