Outside the Canyon Gates Again Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange determined to go back from the mountains, the way they had come.

Said the novelist, "It is as unseemly to rush pell-mell from an audience with the gods as it is to enter their presence irreverently." To which the artist answered, laughing, "Even criminals under sentence have, at least, the privilege of going to their prisons reluctantly." So they went down from the mountains, reverently and reluctantly.
Yee Kee, with the more elaborate equipment of the camp, was sent on ahead by wagon.

The two men, with Croesus packed for a one night halt, and Czar, would follow.

When all was ready, and they could neither of them invent any more excuses for lingering, Conrad Lagrange gave the word to the burro and they set out--down the little slope of grassy land; across the tiny stream from the cienaga; around the lower end of the old orchard, by the ancient weed-grown road--even Czar went slowly, with low-hung head, as if regretful at leaving the mountains that he, too, in his dog way, loved.
At the gate, Aaron King asked the novelist to go on, saying that he would soon overtake him.

It was possible, he said, that he might have left something in the spring glade.