Presently, far down one of the aisles between the great pines Slone saw what appeared to be a yellow cliff, far away.  It puzzled him.  And as he went on he received the impression that the forest dropped out of sight ahead.  Then the trees grew thicker, obstructing his view.  Presently the trail became soggy and he had to help his horse.  The mustang floundered in the soft snow and earth.  Cedars and pinyons appeared again, making travel still more laborious.

All at once there came to Slone a strange consciousness of light and wind and space and void.  On the instant his horse halted with a snort.  Slone quickly looked up.  Had he come to the end of the world?  An abyss, a canyon, yawned beneath him, beyond all comparison in its greatness.  His keen eye, educated to desert distance and dimension, swept down and across, taking in the tremendous truth, before it staggered his comprehension.  But a second sweeping glance, slower, becoming intoxicated with what it beheld, saw gigantic cliff-steps and yellow slopes dotted with cedars, leading down to clefts filled with purple smoke, and these led on and on to a ragged red world of rock, bare, shining, bold, uplifted in mesa, dome, peak, and crag, clear and strange in the morning light, still and sleeping like death.

This, then, was the great canyon, which had seemed like a hunter’s fable rather than truth.  Slone’s sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he found that his eyes had filled with tears.  He wiped them away and looked again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and the grandeur and the vague sadness of the scene.  Nothing he had ever looked at had affected him like this canyon, although the Stewarts had tried to prepare him for it.

It was the horse-hunter’s passion that reminded him of his pursuit.  The deer trail led down through a break in the wall.  Only a few rods of it could be seen.  This trail was passable, even though choked with snow.  But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him back, used as he was to desert trails.  Then the clean mark of Wildfire’s hoof brought back the old thrill.

“This place fits you, Wildfire,” muttered Slone, dismounting.

He started down, leading Nagger.  The mustang followed.  Slone kept to the wall side of the trail, fearing the horses might slip.  The snow held firmly at first and Slone had no trouble.  The gap in the rim-rock widened to a slope thickly grown over with cedars and pinyons and manzanita.  This growth made the descent more laborious, yet afforded means at least for Slone to go down with less danger.  There was no stopping.  Once started, the horses had to keep on.  Slone saw the impossibility of ever climbing out while that snow was there.  The trail zigzagged down and down.  Very soon the yellow wall hung tremendously over him, straight up.  The snow became thinner and softer.  The horses began to slip.  They slid on their haunches.  Fortunately the slope grew less steep, and Slone could