down the canyon on the farther side, and as I went I saw the torrent storming below me, a winding sheet of spray.  The boulder had stopped on a level bluff, but two sections, splitting from it, had dropped to the bank underneath and, tilting together in an apex, formed a small cavern through which washed a rill.  It made a considerable pool and, dividing, poured on either side of the uprooted trunk of a fir that bridged the stream.  The log was very old; it sagged mid-channel, as though a break had started, and snagged limbs stretched a line of pitfalls.  But a few yards below the river plunged in cataract, and above I found sheer cliffs curving in a double horseshoe.  It was impossible to swim the racing current, and I came back to the log.  By that time another twilight was on me.  The forest had been very still; I hadn’t noticed a bird all day, but while I stood weighing the chances of that crossing, I heard the harsh call of a kingfisher or jay.  It seemed to come from the slope beyond the bluff, and instantly an answer rose faintly in the direction of the trail.  I was leaning on one of the tilted slabs, and I wormed myself around the base, to avoid leaving an impression in the wet sand, and dipped under the trailing bough of a cedar, through the pool, and crawled up into the cavern.  There wasn’t room to stand erect, and I waited crouching, over moccasins in water.  The cedar began to sway—­I had used the upper boughs to ease myself in sliding down the slab from the bluff—­a fragment of granite dropped, then an Indian came between me and the light.

“While he stopped to examine the sand at the edge of the pool, another followed.  He ventured a short distance out on the log and came back, while the first set his rifle against the trunk and sank on his hands and knees to drink.  The water, roiled probably by my steps, was not to his taste, and he rejected it with a disgusted ‘Hwah!’ When he rose, he stood looking across the pool into my cavern.  I held my breath, hugging the bluff behind me like a lizard.  It was so dark I doubted if even his lynx eyes could discover me, but he lifted the gun and for an instant I believed he meant to send a shot into the hole.  Then he seemed to think better of wasting his ammunition and led the way down-stream.  They stopped on a level bank over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and later of cooking trout.  My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre.  The light of their fire showed both figures stretched on the ground.  They had camped for the night.