"Dat ar dog looks to me ez if he had been habin' a big feed some place," said Ike, when they got on shore, and he could examine Maj's rounded form, which his dripping coat made more conspicuous.
"Mebbe him full of watel," suggested Wah Shin.
"No," said Ike, as he pressed the dog's sides, "it's grub; good solid grub." Then, addressing Maj, he said, in tones intended to be very seductive: "See har, ole feller, don't go foh to tell me dat yer hungry, like we is. You'se been eatin' meat, don't say 'no' foh I won't stan' it; but, like a good dorg, show me de place whar yeh found it, an' if ebber I gits out ob dis yeh fix, I'll buy yeh a brass collar, wif yeh name on de outside in great big letters."
As if he understood this and was anxious to earn the reward so generously offered him, Maj started off with a short, sharp bark, but before he had gone very far he turned and came slowly back again, as if he had changed his mind.
Meanwhile, Wah Shin got together a pile of dry wood, and, as the matches in Sam's water-proof case escaped the water, they soon had a roaring fire, before which their cargo and their clothes—the latter well tattered—were placed to dry.
At first Sam, who was now very hungry, was inclined to think that it was a whim of Ike's that led him to see anything suggestive of food in the dog's appearance, but when he came to look carefully at the animal and study his contented manner, he was satisfied that he had found something to eat since being washed from the raft.
With nearly all his clothes drying before the fire, Sam, followed by Ike, started off to examine the shore further down.
He had not gone far when he noticed great clefts in the walls of the cañon, as if the mighty mass had been cracked by some tremendous power.
These fissures ran up and back for thousands of feet, but the largest one visible was not of sufficient width to admit of their getting up in that way, neither were these openings on the side of the cañon which they must ascend in order to reach Hurley's Gulch.
An examination of the point where one of the fissures came down to the shore convinced Sam that some creatures had used this passage-way recently as an avenue for ascending to the upper world, or coming down to this profound and silent valley.