He was leading the way, as he spoke, toward the face of a mesa that abutted almost on the trail.  Curly apparently had not paid the slightest attention to the reproof.  He was already hobbling his horse.

They made no attempt to look for a spring.  The hollows of the rocks were filled with rain water.  But the search for wood was long and arduous.  In fact, it was nearly dusk before they had gathered enough to last out the evening.  But here and there a tiny cedar or mesquite yielded itself up and at last a good blaze flared up before the mesa.  The men shifted to dry underwear, wrung out their outer clothing and put it on again, and drank copiously of the hot coffee.  In spite of damp clothing and blankets Enoch slept deeply and dreamlessly, and rose the next day none the worse for the wetting.  Even in this short time his physical tone was improving and he felt sure that his mind must follow.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COLORADO

“We had a particularly vile place to raid to-day, and as I listened with sick heart to the report of it, suddenly I saw the Canyon and F.’s broad back on his mule and the glorious line of the rim lifting from opalescent mists.”—­Enoch’s Diary.

They had been a week on the trail when they made camp one night at a spring surrounded by dwarf junipers.  Mack, who had taken the trip before, greeted the spring with a shout of satisfaction.

“Ten miles from the river, boys!  To-morrow afternoon should see us panning gold.”

And to-morrow did, indeed, bring the river.  There was a wide view of the Colorado as they approached it.  The level which had gradually lifted during the entire week, making each day cooler, rarer, as it came, now sloped downward, while mesa and headland grew higher, the way underfoot more broken, the trail fainter and fainter, and the thermometer rose steadily.

By now deep fissures appeared in the desert floor, and to the north lifted great mountains that were banded in multi-colored strata, across which drifted veils of mist, lavender, blue and gauzy white.  Enoch’s heart began to beat heavily.  It was the Canyon country, indeed!  The country of enchantment to which his spirit had returned for so many years.

They ate lunch in a little canyon opening north and south.

“At the north end of this,” said Mack, “we make our first sharp drop a thousand feet straight down.  She’s a devil of a trail, made by Indians nobody knows when.  Then we cross a plateau, about a mile wide, as I remember, then it’s an easy grade to the river.  We’ve got to go over the girths careful.  If anything slips now it’s farewell!”

The trail was a nasty one, zig-zagging down the over-hanging face of the wall.  Enoch, to his deep-seated satisfaction, felt no sense of panic, although in common with Mack and Curly, he was apprehensive and at times a little giddy.  It required an hour to compass the drop.  At the bottom was a tiny spring where men and beasts drank deeply, then started on.