Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait.  The sun climbed.  The wind rose and whipped dust from under the mustangs.  There is seldom much talk on a ride of this nature.  It is hard work and everybody for himself.  Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to silence.  I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.

It was a wild place we were approaching.  I saw pinon patches under the circled walls.  I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face.  We were already in the lee of a wall.  I saw the rock squirrels scampering to their holes.  Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners of cliff.

I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars.  It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock.  Here we dismounted to begin the ascent.  It was smooth and hard, though not slippery.  There was not a crack.  I did not see a broken piece of stone.  Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up.  I began to see similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be called a curve.  There were yellow domes far above and small red domes far below.  Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another.  There were no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pinon.  We found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.

Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between.  Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast.  Our mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short, careful steps.  They knew a great deal better than we what the danger was.  It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in horses something besides beasts of burden.  In the ascent of the second slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bulge and depression.

Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous slopes I had ever seen.  We had reached the height of the divide and many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us to see the bottom.

[Illustration:  This immense cave would hold Trinity Church.  In it lies the ruined cliff dwelling called Betatakin]

At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub.  On the steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide.  His momentum jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian.  But Joe Lee held on.  Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of anything he had.  He began to slide with the horse, holding back with all his might.