They started directly after, and for about two hours did nothing but climb up amidst cedar and pine forest. Sometimes amongst the trunks of big trees, sometimes down in gashes or gullies in the mountain-side, which were full of younger growths, as if the rich soil and pine seeds had been swept there by the storms and then taken root.
“I tell you what it is, Master Bart,” said Joses, suddenly coming to a halt, to roll up and light his cigarito, a practice he never gave up, “it strikes me that we’ve nearly got to the end of it.”
“End of what?” asked Bart.
“This clump of hills. You see if when we get to the top here, it don’t all go down full swoop like a house wall right bang to the plain.”
“What, like the place where the mountain sheep went down?”
“That’s it, my lad, only without any go up on the other side. It strikes me that we shall find it all plain on this side, and that if we can’t find a break in the wall with a regular gulch, we shall have to go back with our horses and waggon and try some other way.”
“Well, come along and let’s see,” said Bart; and once more they climbed on for quite half-an-hour, when they emerged from the trees on to a rugged piece of open rocky plain, with scattered pines gnarled and twisted and swept bare by the mighty winds, and as far as eye could reach nothing but one vast, well-watered plain.
“Told you so,” said Joses; “now we shall either have to keep up here in the mountain or go down among the Injuns again, just as the master likes.”
“Let’s come and sit down near the edge here and rest,” said Bart, who was fascinated by the beauty of the scene, and, going right out upon a jutting promontory of stone, they could look to right and left at the great wall of rock that spread as far as they could see. In places it seemed to go sheer down to the plain, in others it was broken into ledges by slips and falls of rock; but everywhere it seemed to shut the great plain in from the west, and Bart fully realised that they would have to find some great rift or gulch by which to descend, if their journey was to be continued in this direction.
“How far is it down to the plain?” said Bart, after he had been feasting his eyes for some time.