The sun in all his course does not look down on a wilder, grander or more desolate land than that which met the gaze of the young hunters, no matter to which side they turned.
Verdureless mountains of fantastic shapes rose into the cloudless sky on every hand.
Here and there in the crevices of the black volcanic rocks, over which they hurried, a stunted sagebush or a dwarf cactus suggested the awful barrenness of the place rather than told of vegetation.
They were in the land of cañons and drought, on the summit of the Great American Plateau where rain but seldom falls, where the streams flow through frightful gorges, and where men and animals have often perished from thirst within sight of waters which they could not reach.
Bleak and sublime as the land was, is, and ever must be, yet the belief—a well founded belief by the way—that its gloomy ravines contained gold, led hundreds of hardy miners and adventurers to look upon it as that El Dorado for which the early Spanish explorers in these wilds had sought in vain.
As the leader of the little party, Sam Willett, strode ahead, the deepening shadows of the mountains impelled him each instant to a quicker pace.
There was no apparent trail, yet Sam never hesitated in his course, but kept on as unerringly as a bird of passage, till he came to a great black rift that seemed to suddenly open at his feet.
Away down in the shadowy depths he could see a white band that told of moving water.
A glow, the source of which could not be seen, indicated a fire down near the base of the cliff, and the barking of a dog—the sound appeared to come from the depths of a cave—suggested a human habitation.
On reaching the crest of the chasm Sam Willett did not hesitate, but at once plunged down to what, to a stranger, would appear certain death.