The rise seemed to be endless—­to have no visible terminus.  For it went up and up until it melted into the horizon; like the brow of a hill against the sky.  But when, after hours of difficult travel, herd and men gained the summit, a broad, green-brown mesa lay before them.

The mesa was miles wide, and ran an interminable distance eastward.  Looking back over the way they had come, the men could see that the level over which they had ridden for the past two days was in reality the floor of a mighty valley.  Far away into the west they could see a break in the mesa—­where it sloped down to merge into the plains near Willets.  The men knew that beyond that break ran the steel rails that connected the town with Red Rock, their destination.  But it was plain to them that the rails must make a gigantic curve somewhere in the invisible distance, or that they ran straight into a range of low mountains that fringed the northern edge of the mesa.

Lawler enlightened the men at the camp fire that night.

“The railroad runs almost straight from Willets,” he said.  “There’s a tunnel through one of the mountains, and other tunnels east of it.  And there’s a mountain gorge with plenty of water in it, where the railroad runs on a shelving level blasted out of the wall.  The mountains form a barrier that keeps Willets and the Wolf River section blocked in that direction.  It’s the same south of here, the only difference being that in the south there is no railroad until you strike the Southern Pacific.  And that’s a long distance to drive cattle.”

When the herd began to move the following morning, Blackburn sent them over the mesa for several miles, and then began to head them down a gradual slope, leaving the mesa behind.  There was a faint trail, narrow, over which in other days cattle had been driven.  For the grass had been trampled and cut to pieces; and in some places there were still prints of hoofs in the baked soil.

The slope grew sharper, narrowing as it descended, and the cattle moved down it in a sinuous, living line, until the leaders were out of sight far around a bend at least a mile distant.

Blackburn was at the head of the herd with three men, riding some little distance in front of the cattle, inspecting the trail.  Lawler and the others were holding the stragglers at the top of the mesa, endeavoring to prevent the crowding and confusion which always results when massed cattle are being held at an outlet.  It was like a crowd of eager humans attempting to gain entrance through a doorway at the same instant.  The cattle were plunging, jostling.  The concerted impulse brought the inevitable confusion—­a jam that threatened frenzy.

By Lawler’s orders the men drew off, and the cattle, relieved of the menace which always drives them to panic in such a situation, began to filter through and to follow their leaders down the narrow trail.

Down, always down, the trail led, growing narrower gradually, until at last cattle and men were moving slowly on a rocky floor with the sheer wall of the mesa on one side and towering mountains on the other.