She's a devil of a trail, made by Indians
nobody knows when. Then we cross a plateau, about a mile wide, as I
remember, then it's an easy grade to the river. We've got to go over
the girths careful. If anything slips now it's farewell!"
The trail was a nasty one, zig-zagging down the over-hanging face of
the wall. Enoch, to his deep-seated satisfaction, felt no sense of
panic, although in common with Mack and Curly, he was apprehensive and
at times a little giddy. It required an hour to compass the drop. At
the bottom was a tiny spring where men and beasts drank deeply, then
started on.
The plateau was rough, deep covered with broken rock, but the trail,
though faint, held to the edge. At this edge the men paused. The
Colorado lay before them.
Fifty feet below them was a wide stretch of sand. Next, the river,
smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward. Beyond the water, on the
opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a
pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge.
Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding,
two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across
the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a
mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in
the sunlight.
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