The result of the dialogue which ensued was that, after the train had entered the gorge of the larger canon, Coronado and Clara turned back and wandered up the smaller one, followed at a distance by Texas Smith.  In twenty minutes they were separated from the wagons by a barrier of sandstone several hundred feet high, and culminating in a sharp ridge or frill of rocky points, not unlike the spiny back of a John Dory.  The scenery, although nothing new to Clara, was such as would be considered in any other land amazing.  Vast walls on either side, consisting mainly of yellow sandstone, were variegated with white, bluish, and green shales, with layers of gypsum of the party-colored marl series, with long lines of white limestone so soft as to be nearly earth, and with red and green foliated limestone mixed with blood-red shales.  The two wanderers seemed to be amid the landscapes of a Christmas drama as they rode between these painted precipices toward a crimson, sunset.

It was a perfect solitude.  There was not a breath of life besides their own in this gorgeous valley of desolation.  The ragged, crumbling battlements, and the loftier points of harder rock, would not have furnished subsistence for a goat or a mouse.  Color was everywhere and life nowhere:  it was such a region as one might look for in the moon; it did not seem to belong to an inhabited planet.

Before they had ridden half an hour the sun went down suddenly behind serrated steeps, and almost immediately night hastened in with his obscurities.  Texas Smith, riding hundreds of yards in the rear and concealing himself behind the turning points of the canon, was obliged to diminish his distance in order to keep them under his guard.  Clara had repeatedly expressed her doubts as to the road, and Coronado had as often asserted that they would soon see the train.  At last the ravine became a gully, winding up a breast of shadowy mountain cumbered with loose rocks, and impassable to horses.

“We are lost,” confessed Coronado, and then proceeded to console her.  The train could not be far off; their friends would undoubtedly seek them; at all events, would not go on without them.  They must bivouac there as well as might be, and in the morning rejoin the caravan.

He had been forethoughted enough to bring two blankets on his saddle, and he now spread them out for her, insisting that she should try to sleep.  Clara cried frankly and heartily, and begged him to lead her back through the canon.  No; it could not be traversed by night, he asserted; they would certainly break their necks among the bowlders.  At last the girl suffered herself to be wrapped in the blankets, and made an endeavor to forget her wretchedness and vexation in slumber.

Meantime, a few hundred yards down the ravine, a tragedy was on the verge of action.  Thurstane, missing Coronado and Clara, and learning what direction they had taken, started with two of his soldiers to find them, and was now picking his way on foot along the canon.  Behind a detached rock at the base of one of the sandstone walls Texas Smith lay in ambush, aiming his rifle first at one and then at another of this stumbling trio, and cursing the starlight because it was so dim that he could not positively distinguish which was the officer.