“Fay, how do you know you’re going in the right direction?” asked Shefford, anxiously.

“I never forget any ground I’ve been over.  I keep my eyes close ahead.  All that seems strange to me is the wrong way.  What I’ve seen, before must be the right way, because I saw it when they brought me from Surprise Valley.”

Shefford had to acknowledge that she was following an Indian’s instinct for ground he had once covered.

Still Shefford began to worry, and finally dropped back to question Nas Ta Bega.

“Bi Nai, she has the eye of a Navajo,” replied the Indian.  “Look!  Iron-shod horses have passed here.  See the marks in the stone?”

Shefford indeed made out faint cut tracks that would have escaped his own sight.  They had been made long ago, but they were unmistakable.

“She’s following the trail by memory—­she must remember the stones, trees, sage, cactus,” said Shefford in surprise.

“Pictures in her mind,” replied the Indian.

Thereafter the farther she progressed the less at fault she appeared and the faster she traveled.  She made several miles an hour, and about the middle of the afternoon entered upon the more broken region of the plateau.  View became restricted.  Low walls, and ruined cliffs of red rock with cedars at their base, and gullies growing into canyon and canyon opening into larger ones—­these were passed and crossed and climbed and rimmed in travel that grew more difficult as the going became wilder.  Then there was a steady ascent, up and up all the time, though not steep, until another level, green with cedar and pinyon, was reached.

It reminded Shefford of the forest near the mouth of the Sagi.  It was so dense he could not see far ahead of Fay, and often he lost sight of her entirely.  Presently he rode out of the forest into a strip of purple sage.  It ended abruptly, and above that abrupt line, seemingly far away, rose a long, red wall.  Instantly he recognized that to be the opposite wall of a canyon which as yet he could not see.

Fay was acting strangely and he hurried forward.  She slipped off Nack-yal and fell, sprang up and ran wildly, to stand upon a promontory, her arms uplifted, her hair a mass of moving gold in the wind, her attitude one of wild and eloquent significance.

Shefford ran, too, and as he ran the red wall in his eager sight seemed to enlarge downward, deeper and deeper, and then it merged into a strip of green.

Suddenly beneath him yawned a red-walled gulf, a deceiving gulf seen through transparent haze, a softly shining green-and-white valley, strange, wild, beautiful, like a picture in his memory.

“Surprise Valley!” he cried, in wondering recognition.

Fay Larkin waved her arms as if they were wings to carry her swiftly downward, and her plaintive cry fitted the wildness of her manner and the lonely height where she leaned.