horse, and so his thoughts revolved the possibilities connected with
this chase of Wildfire. The chase was hopeless in such country as he was
traversing, and if Wildfire chose to roam around valleys like this one
Slone would fail utterly. But the stallion had long ago left his band of
horses, and then, one by one his favorite consorts, and now he was
alone, headed with unerring instinct for wild, untrammeled ranges. He
had been used to the pure, cold water and the succulent grass of the
cold desert uplands. Assuredly he would not tarry in such barren lands
as these.
For Slone an ever-present and growing fascination lay in Wildfire's
clear, sharply defined tracks. It was as if every hoof mark told him
something. Once, far up the interminable ascent, he found on a ridge top
tracks showing where Wildfire had halted and turned.
"Ha, Nagger!" cried Slone, exultingly. "Look there! He's begun facin'
about. He's wonderin' if we're still after him. He's worried. . . . But
we'll keep out of sight--a day behind."
When Slone reached the cedars the sun was low down in the west. He
looked back across the fifty miles of valley to the colored cliffs and
walls. He seemed to be above them now, and the cool air, with tang of
cedar and juniper, strengthened the impression that he had climbed high.
A mile or more ahead of him rose a gray cliff with breaks in it and a
line of dark cedars or pinyons on the level rims. He believed these
breaks to be the mouths of canyons, and so it turned out. Wildfire's
trail led into the mouth of a narrow canyon with very steep and high
walls. Nagger snorted his perception of water, and the mustang whistled.
Wildfire's tracks led to a point under the wall where a spring gushed
forth. There were mountain lion and deer tracks also, as well as those
of smaller game.
Slone made camp here. The mustang was tired. But Nagger, upon taking a
long drink, rolled in the grass as if he had just begun the trip. After
eating, Slone took his rifle and went out to look for deer. But there
appeared to be none at hand. He came across many lion tracks, and saw,
with apprehension, where one had taken Wildfire's trail. Wildfire had
grazed up the canyon, keeping on and on, and he was likely to go miles in
a night. Slone reflected that as small as were his own chances of
getting Wildfire, they were still better than those of a mountain lion.
Wildfire was the most cunning of all animals--a wild stallion; his speed
and endurance were incomparable; his scent as keen as those animals that
relied wholly upon scent to warn them of danger; and as for sight, it
was Slone's belief that no hoofed creature, except the mountain sheep
used to high altitudes, could see as far as a wild horse.
It bothered Slone a little that he was getting into a lion country.
Nagger showed nervousness, something unusual for him. Slone tied both
horses with long halters and stationed them on patches of thick grass.
Then he put a cedar stump on the fire and went to sleep. Upon awakening
and going to the spring he was somewhat chagrined to see that deer had
come down to drink early. Evidently they were numerous. A lion country
was always a deer country, for the lions followed the deer.
Slone was packed and saddled and on his way before the sun reddened the
canyon wall. He walked the horses. From time to time he saw signs of
Wildfire's consistent progress. The canyon narrowed and the walls grew
lower and the grass increased. There was a decided ascent all the time.
Slone could find no evidence that the canyon had ever been traveled by
hunters or Indians. The day was pleasant and warm and still. Every once
in a while a little breath of wind would bring a fragrance of cedar and
pinyon, and a sweet hint of pine and sage. At every turn he looked ahead,
expecting to see the green of pine and the gray of sage. Toward the
middle of the afternoon, coming to a place where Wildfire had taken to a
trot, he put Nagger to that gait, and by sundown had worked up to where
the canyon was only a shallow ravine. And finally it turned once more, to
lose itself in a level where straggling pines stood high above the
cedars, and great, dark-green silver spruces stood above the pines. And
here were patches of sage, fresh and pungent, and long reaches of
bleached grass. It was the edge of a forest. Wildfire's trail went on.
Slone came at length to a group of pines, and here he found the remains
of a camp fire, and some flint arrow-heads. Indians had been in there,
probably having come from the opposite direction to Slone's. This
encouraged him, for where Indians could hunt so could he. Soon he was
entering a forest where cedars and pinyons and pines began to grow
thickly. Presently he came upon a faintly defined trail, just a dim,
dark line even to an experienced eye. But it was a trail, and Wildfire
had taken it.
Slone halted for the night. The air was cold. And the dampness of it
gave him an idea there were snow banks somewhere not far distant. The
dew was already heavy on the grass. He hobbled the horses and put a bell
on Nagger. A bell might frighten lions that had never heard one. Then he
built a fire and cooked his meal.
It had been long since he had camped high up among the pines. The sough
of the wind pleased him, like music. There had begun to be prospects of
pleasant experience along with the toil of chasing Wildfire. He was
entering new and strange and beautiful country. How far might the chase
take him? He did not care. He was not sleepy, but even if he had been it
developed that he must wait till the coyotes ceased their barking round
his camp fire. They came so close that he saw their gray shadows in the
gloom. But presently they wearied of yelping at him and went away. After
that the silence, broken only by the wind as it roared and lulled,
seemed beautiful to Slone. He lost completely that sense of vague regret
which had remained with him, and he forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he
felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild,
thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn of a
timber wolf wailed in with the wind. Seldom had he heard the cry of one
of those night wanderers. There was nothing like it--no sound like it to
fix in the lone camper's heart the great solitude and the wild.
II
In the early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were
shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb
that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming
them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet with frosty
fragrance.
Daylight came while he was in the midst of his morning meal. A white
frost covered the ground and crackled under his feet as he went out to
bring in the horses. He saw fresh deer tracks. Then he went back to camp
for his rifle. Keeping a sharp lookout for game, he continued his search
for the horses.
The forest was open and parklike. There were no fallen trees or
evidences of fire. Presently he came to a wide glade in the midst of
which Nagger and the pack mustang were grazing with a herd of deer. The
size of the latter amazed Slone. The deer he had hunted back on the
Sevier range were much smaller than these. Evidently these were mule
deer, closely allied to the elk. They were so tame they stood facing him
curiously, with long ears erect. It was sheer murder to kill a deer
standing and watching like that, but Slone was out of meat and hungry
and facing a long, hard trip. He shot a buck, which leaped spasmodically
away, trying to follow the herd, and fell at the edge of the glade.
Slone cut out a haunch, and then, catching the horses, he returned to
camp, where he packed and saddled, and at once rode out on the dim
trail.
The wilderness of the country he was entering was evident in the fact
that as he passed the glade where he had shot the deer a few minutes
before, there were coyotes quarreling over the carcass.
Slone could see ahead and on each side several hundred yards, and
presently he ascertained that the forest floor was not so level as he
had supposed. He had entered a valley or was traversing a wide, gently
sloping pass. He went through thickets of juniper, and had to go around
clumps of quaking asp. The pines grew larger and farther apart. Cedars
and pinyons had been left behind, and he had met with no silver spruces
after leaving camp. Probably that point was the height of a divide.
There were banks of snow in some of the hollows on the north side.
Evidently the snow had very recently melted, and it was evident also
that the depth of snow through here had been fully ten feet, judging
from the mutilation of the juniper trees where the deer, standing on the
hard, frozen crust, had browsed upon the branches.
The quiet of the forest thrilled Slone. And the only movement was the
occasional gray flash of a deer or coyote across a glade. No birds of
any species crossed Slone's sight. He came, presently, upon a lion track
in the trail, made probably a day before. Slone grew curious about it,
seeing how it held, as he was holding, to Wildfire's tracks. After a
mile or so he made sure the lion had been trailing the stallion, and for
a second he felt a cold contraction of his heart. Already he loved
Wildfire, and by virtue of all this toil of travel considered the wild
horse his property.
"No lion could ever get close to Wildfire," he soliloquized, with a
short laugh. Of that he was absolutely certain.
The sun rose, melting the frost, and a breath of warm air, laden with
the scent of pine, moved heavily under the huge, yellow trees. Slone
passed a point where the remains of an old camp fire and a pile of deer
antlers were further proof that Indians visited this plateau to hunt.
From this camp broader, more deeply defined trails led away to the south
and east. Slone kept to the east trail, in which Wildfire's tracks and
those of the lion showed clearly. It was about the middle of the
forenoon when the tracks of the stallion and lion left the trail to lead
up a little draw where grass grew thick. Slone followed, reading the
signs of Wildfire's progress, and the action of his pursuer, as well as
if he had seen them. Here the stallion had plowed into a snow bank,
eating a hole two feet deep; then he had grazed around a little; then on
and on; there his splendid tracks were deep in the soft earth. Slone
knew what to expect when the track of the lion veered from those of the
horse, and he followed the lion tracks. The ground was soft from the
late melting of snow, and Nagger sunk deep. The lion left a plain track.
Here he stole steadily along; there he left many tracks at a point where
he might have halted to make sure of his scent. He was circling on the
trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush. The end of this
slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the
edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait. From this perch
he had made a magnificent spring--Slone estimating it to be forty
feet--but he had missed the stallion. There were Wildfire's tracks
again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of
fright he had sprung out of reach. A second leap of the lion, and then
lessening bounds, and finally an abrupt turn from Wildfire's trail told
the futility of that stalk. Slone made certain that Wildfire was so keen
that as he grazed along he had kept to open ground.
Wildfire had run for a mile, then slowed down to a trot, and he had
circled to get back to the trail he had left. Slone believed the horse
was just so intelligent. At any rate, Wildfire struck the trail again,
and turned at right angles to follow it.
Here the forest floor appeared perfectly level. Patches of snow became
frequent, and larger as Slone went on. At length the patches closed up,
and soon extended as far as he could see. It was soft, affording
difficult travel. Slone crossed hundreds of deer tracks, and the trail
he was on evidently became a deer runway.
Presently, far down one of the aisles between the great pines Slone saw
what appeared to be a yellow cliff, far away. It puzzled him. And as he
went on he received the impression that the forest dropped out of sight
ahead. Then the trees grew thicker, obstructing his view. Presently the
trail became soggy and he had to help his horse. The mustang floundered
in the soft snow and earth. Cedars and pinyons appeared again, making
travel still more laborious.
All at once there came to Slone a strange consciousness of light and
wind and space and void. On the instant his horse halted with a snort.
Slone quickly looked up. Had he come to the end of the world? An abyss,
a canyon, yawned beneath him, beyond all comparison in its greatness. His
keen eye, educated to desert distance and dimension swept down and
across, taking in the tremendous truth, before it staggered his
comprehension. But a second sweeping glance, slower, becoming
intoxicated with what it beheld, saw gigantic cliff steppes and yellow
slopes dotted with cedars, leading down to clefts filled with purple
smoke, and these led on and on to a ragged red world of rock, bare,
shining, bold, uplifted in mesa, dome, peak, and crag, clear and strange
in the morning light, still and sleeping like death.
This, then, was the great canyon, which had seemed like a hunter's fable
rather than truth. Slone's sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he
found that his eyes had filled with tears. He wiped them away and looked
again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and grandeur
and the vague sadness of the scene. Nothing he had ever looked at had
affected him like this canyon, although the Stewarts had tried to prepare
him for it.
It was the horse hunter's passion that reminded him of his pursuit. The
deer trail led down through a break in the wall. Only a few rods of it
could be seen. This trail was passable, even though choked with snow.
But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him
back, used as he was to desert trails. Then the clean mark of Wildfire's
hoof brought back the old thrill.
"This place fits you, Wildfire," muttered Slone, dismounting.
He started down, leading Nagger. The mustang followed. Slone kept to the
wall side of the trail, fearing the horses might slip. The snow held
firmly at first and Slone had no trouble. The gap in the rim rock
widened to a slope thickly grown over with cedars and pinyons and
manzanita. This growth made the descent more laborious, yet afforded
means at least for Slone to go down with less danger. There was no
stopping. Once started, the horses had to keep on. Slone saw the
impossibility of ever climbing out while that snow was there. The trail
zigzagged down and down. Very soon the yellow wall hung tremendously
over him, straight up. The snow became thinner and softer. The horses
began to slip. They slid on their haunches. Fortunately the slope grew
less steep, and Slone could see below where it reached out to
comparatively level ground. Still, a mishap might yet occur. Slone kept
as close to Nagger as possible, helping him whenever he could do it. The
mustang slipped, rolled over, and then slipped past Slone, went down the
slope to bring up in a cedar. Slone worked down to him and extricated
him. Then the huge Nagger began to slide. Snow and loose rock slid with
him, and so did Slone. The little avalanche stopped of its own accord,
and then Slone dragged Nagger on down and down, presently to come to the
end of the steep descent. Slone looked up to see that he had made short
work of a thousand-foot slope. Here cedars and pinyons grew thickly
enough to make a forest. The snow thinned out to patches, and then
failed. But the going remained bad for a while as the horses sank deep
in a soft red earth. This eventually grew more solid and finally dry.
Slone worked out of the cedars to what appeared a grassy plateau
inclosed by the great green and white slope with its yellow wall
overhanging, and distant mesas and cliffs. Here his view was restricted.
He was down on the first bench of the great canyon. And there was the
deer trail, a well-worn path keeping to the edge of the slope. Slone
came to a deep cut in the earth, and the trail headed it, where it began
at the last descent of the slope. It was the source of a canyon. He
could look down to see the bare, worn rock, and a hundred yards from
where he stood the earth was washed from its rims and it began to show
depth and something of that ragged outline which told of violence of
flood. The trail headed many canyons like this, all running down across
this bench, disappearing, dropping invisibly. The trail swung to the
left under the great slope, and then presently it climbed to a higher
bench. Here were brush and grass and huge patches of sage, so pungent
that it stung Slone's nostrils. Then he went down again, this time to
come to a clear brook lined by willows. Here the horses drank long and
Slone refreshed himself. The sun had grown hot. There was fragrance of
flowers he could not see and a low murmur of a waterfall that was
likewise invisible. For most of the time his view was shut off, but
occasionally he reached a point where through some break he saw towers
gleaming red in the sun. A strange place, a place of silence, and smoky
veils in the distance. Time passed swiftly. Toward the waning of the
afternoon he began to climb what appeared to be a saddle of land,
connecting the canyon wall on the left with a great plateau, gold-rimmed
and pine-fringed, rising more and more in his way as he advanced. At
sunset Slone was more shut in than for several hours. He could tell the
time was sunset by the golden light on the cliff wall again overhanging
him. The slope was gradual up to this pass to the saddle, and upon
coming to a spring and the first pine trees, he decided to halt for
camp. The mustang was almost exhausted.
Thereupon he hobbled the horses in the luxuriant grass round the spring,
and then unrolled his pack. Once as dusk came stealing down, while he
was eating his meal, Nagger whistled in fright. Slone saw a gray,
pantherish form gliding away into the shadows. He took a quick shot at
it, but missed.
"It's a lion country, all right," he said. And then he set about
building a big fire on the other side of the grassy plot, so as to have
the horses between fires. He cut all the venison into thin strips, and
spent an hour roasting them. Then he lay down to rest, and he said:
"Wonder where Wildfire is to-night? Am I closer to him? Where's he
headin' for?"
The night was warm and still. It was black near the huge cliff, and
overhead velvety blue, with stars of white fire. It seemed to him that
he had become more thoughtful and observing of the aspects of his wild
environment, and he felt a welcome consciousness of loneliness. Then
sleep came to him and the night seemed short. In the gray dawn he arose
refreshed.
The horses were restive. Nagger snorted a welcome. Evidently they had
passed an uneasy night. Slone found lion tracks at the spring and in
sandy places. Presently he was on his way up to the notch between the
great wall and the plateau. A growth of thick scrub oak made travel
difficult. It had not appeared far up to that saddle, but it was far.
There were straggling pine trees and huge rocks that obstructed his
gaze. But once up he saw that the saddle was only a narrow ridge, curved
to slope up on both sides.
Straight before Slone and under him opened the canyon, blazing and
glorious along the peaks and ramparts, where the rising sun struck,
misty and smoky and shadowy down in those mysterious depths.
It took an effort not to keep on gazing. But Slone turned to the grim
business of his pursuit. The trail he saw leading down had been made by
Indians. It was used probably once a year by them; and also by wild
animals, and it was exceedingly steep and rough. Wildfire had paced to
and fro along the narrow ridge of that saddle, making many tracks,
before he had headed down again. Slone imagined that the great stallion
had been daunted by the tremendous chasm, but had finally faced it,
meaning to put this obstacle between him and his pursuers. It never
occurred to Slone to attribute less intelligence to Wildfire than that.
So, dismounting, Slone took Nagger's bridle and started down. The
mustang with the pack was reluctant. He snorted and whistled and pawed
the earth. But he would not be left alone, so he followed.
The trail led down under cedars that fringed a precipice. Slone was
aware of this without looking. He attended only to the trail and to his
horse. Only an Indian could have picked out that course, and it was
cruel to put a horse to it. But Nagger was powerful, sure-footed, and
he would go anywhere that Slone led him. Gradually Slone worked down and
away from the bulging rim wall. It was hard, rough work, and risky
because it could not be accomplished slowly. Brush and rocks, loose
shale and weathered slope, long, dusty inclines of yellow earth, and
jumbles of stone--these made bad going for miles of slow, zigzag trail
down out of the cedars. Then the trail entered what appeared to be a
ravine.
That ravine became a canyon. At its head it was a dry wash, full of
gravel and rocks. It began to cut deep into the bowels of the earth. It
shut out sight of the surrounding walls and peaks. Water appeared from
under a cliff and, augmented by other springs, became a brook. Hot, dry,
and barren at its beginning, this cleft became cool and shady and
luxuriant with grass and flowers and amber moss with silver blossoms.
The rocks had changed color from yellow to deep red. Four hours of
turning and twisting, endlessly down and down, over bowlders and banks
and every conceivable roughness of earth and rock, finished the pack
mustang; and Slone mercifully left him in a long reach of canyon where
grass and water never failed. In this place Slone halted for the noon
hour, letting Nagger have his fill of the rich grazing. Nagger's three
days in grassy upland, despite the continuous travel by day, had
improved him. He looked fat, and Slone had not yet caught the horse
resting. Nagger was iron to endure. Here Slone left all the outfit
except what was on his saddle, and the sack containing the few pounds
of meat and supplies, and the two utensils. This sack he tied on the
back of his saddle, and resumed his journey.
Presently he came to a place where Wildfire had doubled on his trail and
had turned up a side canyon. The climb out was hard on Slone, if not on
Nagger. Once up, Slone found himself upon a wide, barren plateau of
glaring red rock and clumps of greasewood and cactus. The plateau was
miles wide, shut in by great walls and mesas of colored rock. The
afternoon sun beat down fiercely. A blast of wind, as if from a furnace,
swept across the plateau, and it was laden with red dust. Slone walked
here, where he could have ridden. And he made several miles of
up-and-down progress over this rough plateau. The great walls of the
opposite side of the canyon loomed appreciably closer. What, Slone
wondered, was at the bottom of this rent in the earth? The great desert
river was down there, of course, but he knew nothing of it. Would that
turn back Wildfire? Slone thought grimly how he had always claimed
Nagger to be part fish and part bird. Wildfire was not going to escape.
By and by only isolated mescal plants with long, yellow-plumed spears
broke the bare monotony of the plateau. And Slone passed from red sand
and gravel to a red, soft shale, and from that to hard, red rock. Here
Wildfire's tracks were lost, the first time in seven weeks. But Slone
had his direction down that plateau with the cleavage lines of canyons
to right and left. At times Slone found a vestige of the old Indian
trail, and this made him doubly sure of being right. He did not need to
have Wildfire's tracks. He let Nagger pick the way, and the horse made
no mistake in finding the line of least resistance. But that grew harder
and harder. This bare rock, like a file, would soon wear Wildfire's
hoofs thin. And Slone rejoiced. Perhaps somewhere down in this awful
chasm he and Nagger would have if out with the stallion. Slone began to
look far ahead, beginning to believe that he might see Wildfire. Twice
he had seen Wildfire, but only at a distance. Then he had resembled a
running streak of fire, whence his name, which Slone had given him.