After lunch a riding-party to High Rock, down the canyon, was talked about. Long afterward Jack remembered that it had first been suggested by Jean Paul, who volunteered to put the camp in order while they were away. All the whites set out except Humpy Jull. Garrod accompanied the others.
A change had come over Garrod, a comfortable daze taking the place of the wild, harassed look in his eyes. He rode apparently without seeing or caring where. He and Jean Paul had ridden together all morning, and it was observable that the white's man eyes followed all the movements of the Indian in a mechanical way. The two were rapidly becoming inseparable. No thought of danger to himself from this connection occurred to Jack. By this time he had forgotten the scene at Fort Cheever.
They first visited "Hell's Opening" on foot, having to climb over a tangle of great trunks cast high on the rocks by the freshets. One of the great sights of earth rewarded them. The mighty river, a thousand feet wide above, plunged through a cleft in the rock that a child could have tossed a stone across, and, pent within its close, dark walls, swept down with a deep, throaty roar.
The beholders remarked upon it according to their several natures.
"Very pretty," said Sir Bryson. "Let's get on."
"By Jove!" said Sidney Vassall.
"Tertiary rocks of the Cambrian period," said Baldwin Ferrie, or whatever they were.
Garrod looked with lack-lustre eyes, and said nothing.
Linda looked at Jack. Seeing that he was genuinely moved by the sight, familiar as it was to him, she began to enthuse. It sounded overdone to Jack, and he turned on his heel.
Mrs. Worsley looked at it with shining eyes, and said nothing.