Too much Eastern sassiety." And with this inexplicable
self-arraignment he stooped at the tent-door, buckled on his gun, and
started upstream. He glanced from side to side of the steep and
narrowing walls as he advanced slowly. He passed places where the stream
disappeared in the sand to find some subterranean channel and reappear
below again. Rounding an angle of the cliff, he dropped to his knees and
examined some tiny parallel scratches on a rounded rock--the marks made
by a boot-heel that had slipped. For an hour he toiled over the rocks on
up the diminishing stream. "Gettin' thin," he muttered, gazing at the
silver thread of water rippling over the pebbles. A few feet ahead the
cliffs met at the bottom in a sharp-edged "V," not over a foot apart in
the stream-bed, but widening above. Overland scrambled through. On the
other side of the opening he straightened up, breathing hard. His hand
crept to his hip. On a sandy level a few yards ahead of him stood a
ragged and faded canvas tent, its flap wavering idly in a breath of
wind. In front of the tent was the rain-washed charcoal of an old fire.
A rusted pan, a pick, and the worn stub of a shovel lay near the stream.
A box marked "Dynamite" was half-filled with odds and ends of empty
tins, cooking-utensils, and among the things was a glass fruit-jar half
filled with matches.
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