When the herd began to move the following morning, Blackburn sent them over the mesa for several miles, and then began to head them down a gradual slope, leaving the mesa behind. There was a faint trail, narrow, over which in other days cattle had been driven. For the grass had been trampled and cut to pieces; and in some places there were still prints of hoofs in the baked soil.
The slope grew sharper, narrowing as it descended, and the cattle moved down it in a sinuous, living line, until the leaders were out of sight far around a bend at least a mile distant.
Blackburn was at the head of the herd with three men, riding some little distance in front of the cattle, inspecting the trail. Lawler and the others were holding the stragglers at the top of the mesa, endeavoring to prevent the crowding and confusion which always results when massed cattle are being held at an outlet. It was like a crowd of eager humans attempting to gain entrance through a doorway at the same instant. The cattle were plunging, jostling. The concerted impulse brought the inevitable confusion—a jam that threatened frenzy.
By Lawler's orders the men drew off, and the cattle, relieved of the menace which always drives them to panic in such a situation, began to filter through and to follow their leaders down the narrow trail.
Down, always down, the trail led, growing narrower gradually, until at last cattle and men were moving slowly on a rocky floor with the sheer wall of the mesa on one side and towering mountains on the other.
The clatter of hoofs, the clashing of horns, the bellowing, the rumble of the wagons over the rocks and the ring of iron-shod hoofs, created a bedlam of sound, which echoed and re-echoed from the towering walls until the uproar was deafening.
Shorty, the tawny-haired giant, was riding close to Lawler.
He never had ridden the trail, though he had heard of it. He leaned over and shouted to Lawler:
"Kinney's cañon, ain't it?"
Lawler nodded.