"I had my look, three of 'em," growled Fleming. "An' three looks are enough for any man," he added quizzically, binding up his bloody ear with a soiled and faded neckerchief, which should have given him blood-poisoning, but did not.
"Now that we got him treed, there ain't no use goin' on th' rampage an' gettin' all shot up tryin' to get him. All we got to do is wait, an' get him when he has to come down. It'll be plumb easy when he makes his break. A man like him is too cussed handy with his gun for anybody to go an' get reckless with. If we keep one man near th' bottom of that trail, he's our meat. I don't know how he ever got up that scratch on th' wall; but I'll bet there ain't a man livin' that can go down it."
Johnny grew tired of watching for Fleming, and wriggling back to where he could safely get on his feet he arose and made the rounds again. When he reached the place where he had floundered over the edge to safety he critically examined the faint trail from cover, and the more he saw of it the more he regarded his ascent as a miracle.
"Only a fool would 'a' tried it," he grinned. "It's somethin' a man can do once in a hundred times; only he's got to make it th' very first time, or th' other ninety-nine will shore be lost. I'll never forget it, not never."
Watching a while, he wondered if it were guarded, and grinned at the foolishness of the idea; but he slowly pushed his sombrero out around a rock to find out. An angry spang! and a wailing in the sky told him the answer. The flat report in the valley became a mutter along the distant hills.
"Good shootin'," he grunted. "Glad you was out of breath, or excited, or somethin' this mornin'."
Back at the top of the other trail he found two large rocks lying close together near the edge, and he crawled behind them and peered out through the narrow opening for a closer look at the canyon.
It was a chaos, dotted with bowlders of granite, sandstone, and lava, some of them as large as small houses, their tops on a level with the tops of the nearest trees. It was cut by rock ridges, great backbones of stone that defied Time; and dotted with heavily wooded draws which extended up to the foot of the great pile of detritus embracing the foot of the buttes. Down its lowest levels ran a zigzag streak of bright, clean rock, the water-swept path of the torrents sent roaring down by melting snows and an occasional cloud-burst. Several pools, fed by a dark trickle of water from the springs back in the upper reaches, could be seen. Of timber there was plenty, heavy growths of pine extending from the edge of the creek bed to the edge of the detritus, with here and there an opening made by the avalanches which had cut into the greenery for short distances. At other places even the stubborn pines could not find a grip, and a thinning out of the growth let him see the rocky skeleton below; but these were so few that he easily memorized their positions. Trouble would come a-winging to any careless rustler who blundered out onto any of them.
The opposite butte took his attention and he marveled at it. Under its lava cap and the great layer of the limestones was a greater layer of clay and shale and the softer sandstones. These had been harassed and battered by the winds and rains and frosts of ages and the resulting erosion had chiseled out wonderful bits of natural sculpturing. At one place he could see, and with no very great strain upon his imagination, part of a massive building with its great buttresses, where a harder, more enduring streak of rock had offered greater resistance to the everlasting assaults.
Farther to the right was a wonderful collection of columns and pinnacles, and some of the openings between them ran back until shrouded in darkness; great caverns in which houses could be built.