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.