By now deep fissures appeared in the desert floor, and to the north lifted great mountains that were banded in multi-colored strata, across which drifted veils of mist, lavender, blue and gauzy white. Enoch's heart began to beat heavily. It was the Canyon country, indeed! The country of enchantment to which his spirit had returned for so many years.
They ate lunch in a little canyon opening north and south.
"At the north end of this," said Mack, "we make our first sharp drop a thousand feet straight down. She's a devil of a trail, made by Indians nobody knows when. Then we cross a plateau, about a mile wide, as I remember, then it's an easy grade to the river. We've got to go over the girths careful. If anything slips now it's farewell!"
The trail was a nasty one, zig-zagging down the over-hanging face of the wall. Enoch, to his deep-seated satisfaction, felt no sense of panic, although in common with Mack and Curly, he was apprehensive and at times a little giddy. It required an hour to compass the drop. At the bottom was a tiny spring where men and beasts drank deeply, then started on.
The plateau was rough, deep covered with broken rock, but the trail, though faint, held to the edge. At this edge the men paused. The Colorado lay before them.
Fifty feet below them was a wide stretch of sand. Next, the river, smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in the sunlight.
"There you are, Curly!" exclaimed Mack. "There's a spring in the cave beneath us. There's drift wood, enough to run a factory with. Have I delivered the goods, or not?"
"Everything is as per advertisement except the gold," replied Curly.
"Oh, well, I don't vouch for the gold!" said Mack. "I just said the Indians claim they get it here. There's some grazing for the critters up here on the plateau, you see, and not a bit below. So we'll drive 'em back up here and leave 'em. With a little feed of oats once in a while, they'll do. Come ahead! It'll be dark in the Canyon inside of two hours."
The cave proved to be a hollow overhang of the plateau ten or fifteen feet deep, and twice as wide. The floor was covered with sand.