The plateau was rough, deep covered with broken rock, but the trail, though faint, held to the edge.  At this edge the men paused.  The Colorado lay before them.

Fifty feet below them was a wide stretch of sand.  Next, the river, smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward.  Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river’s edge.  Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air.  Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in the sunlight.

“There you are, Curly!” exclaimed Mack.  “There’s a spring in the cave beneath us.  There’s drift wood, enough to run a factory with.  Have I delivered the goods, or not?”

“Everything is as per advertisement except the gold,” replied Curly.

“Oh, well, I don’t vouch for the gold!” said Mack.  “I just said the Indians claim they get it here.  There’s some grazing for the critters up here on the plateau, you see, and not a bit below.  So we’ll drive ’em back up here and leave ’em.  With a little feed of oats once in a while, they’ll do.  Come ahead!  It’ll be dark in the Canyon inside of two hours.”

The cave proved to be a hollow overhang of the plateau ten or fifteen feet deep, and twice as wide.  The floor was covered with sand.

“All ready to go to housekeeping!” exclaimed Curly.  “Judge, you wrangle firewood while Mack and I just give this placer idea a ten minutes’ trial, will you?”

“Go ahead!” said Enoch, “all the gold in the Colorado couldn’t tempt me like something to eat.  If you aren’t ready by the time the fire’s going, Mack, I shall start supper.”

“Go to it!  I can stand it if you can!” returned Mack, who had already unpacked his pan.

From that moment Enoch became the commissary and steward for the expedition.  Curly and Mack, whom he had known as mild and jovial companions of many interests and leisurely manners, changed in a twinkling to monomaniacs who during every daylight hour except for the short interim which they snatched for eating, sought for gold.  At first Enoch laughed at them and tried to get them to take an occasional half day off in which to explore with him.  But they curtly refused to do this, so he fell back on his own resources.  And he discovered that the days were all too short.  Curly had a gun.  There was plenty of ammunition.  Quail and cottontails were to be found on the plateau where the stock was grazing.  Sometimes on Pablo, sometimes afoot, Enoch with the gun, and sometimes with the black diary rolled in his coat, scoured the surrounding country.