first impressions, and what he realized might be his truest ones, were gradually lost.  He could not bring them back.  The river was changing, deceitful.  It worked upon his mind.  The low, hollow roar filled his ears and seemed to mock him.  Then he endeavored to stop thinking about it, to confine his attention to the gap up-stream where sooner or later he prayed that Joe Lake and his boat would appear.  But, though he controlled his gaze, he could not his thought, and his strange, impondering dread of the river augmented.

The afternoon waned.  Nas Ta Bega came back to camp and said any likelihood of Joe’s arrival was past for that day.  Shefford could not get over an impression of strangeness—­of the impossibility of the reality presented to his naked eyes.  These lonely fugitives in the huge-walled canyon waiting for a boatman to come down that river!  Strange and wild—­those were the words which, inadequately at best, suited this country and the situations it produced.

After supper he and Fay walked along the bars of smooth, red sand.  There were a few moments when the distant peaks and domes and turrets were glorified in changing sunset hues.  But the beauty was fleeting.  Fay still showed lassitude.  She was quiet, yet cheerful, and the sweetness of her smile, her absolute trust in him, stirred and strengthened anew his spirit.  Yet he suffered torture when he thought of trusting Fay’s life, her soul, and her beauty to this strange red river.

Night brought him relief.  He could not see the river; only the low roar made its presence known out there in the shadows.  And, there being no need to stay awake, he dropped at once into heavy slumber.  He was roused by hands dragging at him.  Nas Ta Bega bent over him.  It was broad daylight.  The yellow wall high above was glistening.  A fire was crackling and pleasant odors were wafted to him.  Fay and Jane and Lassiter sat around the tarpaulin at breakfast.  After the meal suspense and strain were manifested in all the fugitives, even the imperturbable Indian being more than usually watchful.  His eyes scarcely ever left the black gap where the river slid round the turn above.  Soon, as on the preceding day, he disappeared up the ragged, iron-bound shore.  There was scarcely an attempt at conversation.  A controlling thought bound that group into silence—­if Joe Lake was ever going to come he would come to-day.

Shefford asked himself a hundred times if it were possible, and his answer seemed to be in the low, sullen, muffled roar of the river.  And as the morning wore on toward noon his dread deepened until all chance appeared hopeless.  Already he had begun to have vague and unformed and disquieting ideas of the only avenue of escape left—­ to return up Nonnezoshe Boco—­and that would be to enter a trap.

Suddenly a piercing cry pealed down the canyon.  It was followed by echoes, weird and strange, that clapped from wall to wall in mocking concatenation.  Nas Ta Bega appeared high on the ragged slope.  The cry had been the Indian’s.  He swept an arm out, pointing up-stream, and stood like a statue on the iron rocks.