Sage began to show on the slope, and other kinds of brush and cedars straggled everywhere.  The great rocks loomed closer, the red color mixed with yellow, and the slopes lengthening out, not so steep, yet infinitely longer than they had seemed at a distance.

Shefford ceased to feel the dry wind in his face.  They were already in the lee of the wall.  He could see the rock-squirrels scampering to their holes.  The mustangs valiantly held to the gait, and at last the Indian disappeared between two rounded comers of cliff.  The others were close behind.  Shefford wheeled once more.  Shadd and his gang were a mile in the rear, but coming fast, despite winded horses.

Shefford rode around the wall into a widening space thick with cedars.  It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock.  Here the Indian dismounted.  When the others came up with him he told them to lead their horses and follow.  Then he began the ascent of the rock.

It was smooth and hard, though not slippery.  There was not a crack.  Shefford did not see a broken piece of stone.  Nas Ta Bega climbed straight up for a while, and then wound around a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up.  Shefford began to see similar mounds of rock all around him, of every shape that could be called a curve.  There were yellow domes far above, and small red domes far below.  Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another.  There were no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally, deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pinyon.  The Indian appeared to have a clear idea of where he wanted to go, though there was no vestige of a trail on those bare slopes.  At length Shefford was high enough to see back upon the plain, but the pursuers were no longer in sight.

Nas Ta Bega led to the top of that wall, only to disclose to his followers another and a higher wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, wild, and scalloped depression between.  Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast.  When the ascent of the second wall began it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every level bulge or depression.  They must have consumed half an hour mounting this slope to the summit.  Once there, Shefford drew a sharp breath with both backward and forward glances.  Shadd and his gang, in single file, showed dark upon the bare stone ridge behind.  And to the fore there twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous slopes Shefford had ever seen.  The fugitives had reached the height of stone wall, of the divide, and many of the drops upon this side were perpendicular and too steep to see the bottom.