“Please!  I don’t want to hear it!” protested Enoch,

“Pshaw!  There’s no more daily risk here, than there is in the streets of a large city.”

Enoch grunted and followed as Diana hurried after Na-che.  The course now led along the edge of the plateau which here hung directly above the river.  The water twisted far below like a sinuous brown ribbon.  The nooning sky was bronze blue and burning hot.  The world seemed very huge, to Enoch; the three of them, toiling so carefully over the yellow plateau, very small and insignificant.  He did not talk much during the rest intervals.  He would light his pipe and smoke as if in physical contentment, but his deep blue eyes were burning and somber as they rested on the vast emptiness about them.  Na-che always dozed during the stops.  Diana, after she had observed the look in Enoch’s eyes, occupied herself in writing up her note book.

It was just noon when they came to an old trail which Enoch believed dropped to the cliff dwelling.  Before descending it, they ate their lunch, Enoch and Diana sharing with Na-che.  This done, they began to work carefully down the faint old trail.  For ten or fifteen minutes, they wormed zig-zag downward, the angle of descent so great that frequently they were obliged to sit down and slide, controlling their speed by clinging to the rocks on either side.  They could not see the cliff dwelling; only the river winding so remotely below.  But at the end of the fifteen minutes the trail stopped abruptly.  So unexpectedly, in fact, that Enoch clung to a rock while his legs dangled over the abyss.  He shouted to the others to wait while he peered dizzily below.  A great section of the wall had broken away and the trail could not be taken up again until a sheer gap of twenty feet had been bridged.

Diana crept close behind Enoch and peered over his shoulders.

“If we tie the rope to this pointed rock, I think we can lower ourselves, don’t you?” he asked.

“Easily!” agreed Diana.  “I’ll go first.”

“Well, hardly!  I’ll go first and Na-che can bring up the rear, as usual.”

They knotted the rope around the rock and Enoch and Diana quickly and easily made the descent.  Na-che lowered the camera and tripod to them, then examined, with a sudden exclamation, the rock to which the rope was tied.  “That rock will give way any minute,” she cried.  “Your weight has cracked it.”

Even as she spoke, the rock suddenly tilted and slid, then bounded out to the depths below, carrying the rope with it.  For a moment no one spoke, then Na-che, her round brown face wrinkled with amusement, said,

“Almost no Na-che, no Diana, no Judge, eh?”

“Jove, what an escape!” breathed Enoch.

“Na-che,” said Diana, “you’ll just have to return to the camp for another rope.  You’d better ride back here.  In the meantime, the Judge and I’ll explore the dwelling.”