The dogs led the descent; then came Bess leading her burro; then Venters leading his.  Bess kept her eyes bent downward.  Venters, however, had an irresistible desire to look upward at Balancing Rock.  It had always haunted him, and now he wondered if he were really to get through the outlet before the huge stone thundered down.  He fancied that would be a miracle.  Every few steps he answered to the strange, nervous fear and turned to make sure the rock still stood like a giant statue.  And, as he descended, it grew dimmer in his sight.  It changed form; it swayed it nodded darkly; and at last, in his heightened fancy, he saw it heave and roll.  As in a dream when he felt himself falling yet knew he would never fall, so he saw this long-standing thunderbolt of the little stone-men plunge down to close forever the outlet to Deception Pass.

And while he was giving way to unaccountable dread imaginations the descent was accomplished without mishap.

“I’m glad that’s over,” he said, breathing more freely.  “I hope I’m by that hanging rock for good and all.  Since almost the moment I first saw it I’ve had an idea that it was waiting for me.  Now, when it does fall, if I’m thousands of miles away, I’ll hear it.”

With the first glimpses of the smooth slope leading down to the grotesque cedars and out to the Pass, Venters’s cool nerve returned.  One long survey to the left, then one to the right, satisfied his caution.  Leading the burros down to the spur of rock, he halted at the steep incline.

“Bess, here’s the bad place, the place I told you about, with the cut steps.  You start down, leading your burro.  Take your time and hold on to him if you slip.  I’ve got a rope on him and a half-hitch on this point of rock, so I can let him down safely.  Coming up here was a killing job.  But it’ll be easy going down.”

Both burros passed down the difficult stairs cut by the cliff-dwellers, and did it without a misstep.  After that the descent down the slope and over the mile of scrawled, ripped, and ridged rock required only careful guidance, and Venters got the burros to level ground in a condition that caused him to congratulate himself.

“Oh, if we only had Wrangle!” exclaimed Venters.  “But we’re lucky.  That’s the worst of our trail passed.  We’ve only men to fear now.  If we get up in the sage we can hide and slip along like coyotes.”

They mounted and rode west through the valley and entered the canyon.  From time to time Venters walked, leading his burro.  When they got by all the canyons and gullies opening into the Pass they went faster and with fewer halts.  Venters did not confide in Bess the alarming fact that he had seen horses and smoke less than a mile up one of the intersecting canyons.  He did not talk at all.  And long after he had passed this canyon and felt secure once more in the certainty that they had been unobserved he never relaxed his watchfulness.  But he did not walk any more, and he kept the burros