CHAPTER VI.
That was the last Slone saw of Wildfire for three days.
It took all of this day to climb out of the canyon.

The second was a slow march of thirty miles into a scrub cedar and pinyon forest, through which the great red and yellow walls of the canyon could be seen.

That night Slone found a water-hole in a rocky pocket and a little grass for Nagger.

The third day's travel consisted of forty miles or more through level pine forest, dry and odorous, but lacking the freshness and beauty of the forest on the north side of the canyon.
On this south side a strange feature was that all the water, when there was any, ran away from the rim.

Slone camped this night at a muddy pond in the woods, where Wildfire's tracks showed plainly.
On the following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate distances, forbidding and menacing.