When the boys went to bed the west wall of the canyon was silvered with moonlight, while the east wall was still clothed in shadows. Case’s bunk was nearest to the door of the cabin, and Captain Joe, seeking companionship, snuggled down by it.
The last thing the boy heard, before he dropped into a sound sleep, was the uneasy breathing of the dog. After a time he awoke with a start. Captain Joe was bristling and growling.
“You ornery pup,” Case whispered, “keep still! You’ll wake the boys up! What do you see out there to growl at?”
Captain Joe advanced to the prow of the boat and pointed with a quivering nose to the east wall of the canyon. Then he looked back at Case and invited an apology for previous coarse treatment!
Case looked and turned back to awake the other boys, then changed his mind and stood waiting. On a descending shelf of rock five hundred feet above the level of the river, a white object could be seen creeping slowly downward. It was in the shadow at first, but presently came into a light reflected from the opposite wall.
Then the boys saw a white horse without a head and a white rider, also without a head! The horse moved slowly down the shelf toward the river, and the rider sat upright and stiff, not swaying at all with the motions of the horse! While Case looked the pair, the white horse and the white rider, came to an abrupt ending in the shelf.
To the amazement of the lad they did not stop there. They went on over the edge of the precipice and something white fell down, down, to a rocky bed below. As the white thing shot through the air a shriek of terror echoed over the canyon, and then all was still.
Case watched and listened with a wildly beating heart. The horse and rider had certainly gone down the precipice! He awoke Don and told him of what he had seen. Don looked serious.
“It is the ghost of the canyon,” he said. “For years, on moonlight nights, the horse and rider have gone over the precipice. It is said that a rider met death there years ago, and that his bones, and the bones of his horse, were found at the bottom of the precipice by a hunter. For a long time no one would come within sight of that shelf at night.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts!” Case asserted. “I don’t believe it was a ghost at all! It is some trick to drive us away!”