It was the eastern escarpment of the famous "Llano Estacado," or "Staked Plain." The boys had often heard hunters speak of this tableland, and they recognised its features at a glance.

The butte around which they were travelling was nothing more than an outlying "mesa" of this singular formation of the prairies.
After gazing, for a moment, on the far-off bluffs, our young hunters continued on their course, keeping around the southern side of the eminence.

Still the cliffs rose perpendicularly, and offered no slope by which they might be scaled.

They appeared even higher on this side; and in some places hung over, with dark jutting rocks, and large trees growing horizontally outward.
At one place the boys had halted, and were gazing upward, when several strange-looking creatures suddenly appeared upon the edge of the precipice above them.

They were animals, but such as they had never seen before.