Ages of rain had run down the slope, circling, eddying in depressions, wearing deep round holes.
There had been dry seasons, accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds, and cedars rose wonderfully out of solid rock.

But these were not beautiful cedars.

They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as if growth were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old.

Theirs had been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for them.

This country was hard on trees--and men.
He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open valley.