Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then Bess; and the direction was not an object.  They left the sun-streaked shade of the oaks, brushed the long grass of the meadows, entered the green and fragrant swaying willows, to stop, at length, under the huge old cottonwoods where the beavers were busy.

Here they rested and watched.  A dam of brush and logs and mud and stones backed the stream into a little lake.  The round, rough beaver houses projected from the water.  Like the rabbits, the beavers had become shy.  Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods and pat mud walls with their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny in the sun, to go on with their strange, persistent industry.  They were the builders.  The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a scarred and dead region, but it was a wonderful home of wonderful animals.

“Look at that one—­he puddles in the mud,” said Bess.  “And there!  See him dive!  Hear them gnawing!  I’d think they’d break their teeth.  How’s it they can stay out of the water and under the water?”

And she laughed.

Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and, perhaps not all unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of the cliff-dwellers, where she liked best to go.

The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of weathered rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps all were arduous work for Bess in the climbing.  But she gained the shelf, gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye, with her hand in Venters’s.  Here they rested.  The beautiful valley glittered below with its millions of wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun, and the mighty bridge towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky.  Bess, however, never rested for long.  Soon she was exploring, and Venters followed; she dragged forth from corners and shelves a multitude of crudely fashioned and painted pieces of pottery, and he carried them.  They peeped down into the dark holes of the kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and waited for the long-coming hollow sound to rise.  They peeped into the little globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and they crawled into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their heads on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors.  And they brought from dust and darkness armloads of treasure which they carried to the light.  Flints and stones and strange curved sticks and pottery they found; and twisted grass rope that crumbled in their hands, and bits of whitish stone which crushed to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish in the air.

“That white stuff was bone,” said Venters, slowly.  “Bones of a cliff-dweller.”

“No!” exclaimed Bess.

“Here’s another piece.  Look!...Whew! dry, powdery smoke!  That’s bone.”