Though his eye thus embraced at a glance the whole length of the route, Bob found it a two-hours’ journey down.  Always the walls of the mountains rose higher and higher above him, gaining in majesty and awe as he abandoned to them the upper air.  Always the round valley grew larger, losing its toy-like character.  Its features became, not more distinct, but more detailed.  Bob saw the streets of the town were pleasantly shaded by cotton woods and willows; he distinguished dwelling houses, a store, an office building, a mill building for crushing of ore.  The roar of the river came up to him more clearly.  As though some power had released the magic of the stream, the water now moved.  Rushing foam and white water tumbled over the black and shining rocks; deep pools eddied, dark and green, shot with swirls.

As it became increasingly evident that the road could lead nowhere but through this village, Bob’s spirits rose.  The place was well built.  Bob caught the shimmer of ample glass in the windows, the colour of paint on the boards, and even the ordered rectangles of brick chimneys!  Evidently these things must have been freighted in over the devious steep grade he was at that moment descending.  Bob well knew that, even nearer the source of supplies, such mining camps as this appeared to be were most often but a collection of rude, unpainted shanties, huddled together for a temporary need.  The orderly, well-kept, decent appearance of this hamlet, more like a shaded New England village than a Western camp, argued old establishment, prosperity, and self-respect.  The inhabitants could be no desperate fly-by-nights, such as Saleratus Bill would most likely have sought as companions.  Bob made up his mind that the gun-man would shortly try to threaten him into a temporary secrecy as to the condition of affairs.  This Bob instantly resolved to refuse.

[Illustration:  Bob found it two hours’ journey down]

Saleratus Bill, however, rode on in an unbroken silence.  Long after the brawl of the river had become deafening, the road continued to dip and descend.  It is a peculiar phenomenon incidental to the descent of the sheer canons of the Sierra Nevada that the last few hundred feet down seem longer than the thousands already passed.  This is probably because, having gained close to the level of the tree-tops, the mind, strung taut to the long descent, allows itself prematurely to relax its attention.  Bob turned in his saddle to look back at the grade.  He could not fail to reflect on how lucky it was that the inhabitants of this village could haul their materials and supplies down the road.  It would have been prohibitively difficult to drag anything up.

After a wearisome time the road at last swung out on the flat, and so across the meadow to the bridge.  Feed was belly deep to the horses.  The bridge proved to be a suspension affair of wire cables, that swung alarmingly until the horses had to straddle in order to stand at all.  Below it boiled the river, swirling, dashing, turning lazily and mysteriously over its glass-green depths, the shimmers and folds of eddies rising and swaying like air currents made visible.