Plimsoll said nothing more.
As they neared the gap, translated by Phil in the unconsciousness that Bolsa had two meanings in Spanish, Jordan slowed up.
"No shootin' in this deal," he warned. "Come to a show-down, Bourke won't buck the law soon's we show papers. So long's he ain't been notified the court is makin' a ward of the girl they ain't done nothin' wrong. But—if he resists, that's different."
"I ain't goin' to be awful anxious to start shootin'," said Phil. "They done some pretty shootin' at the bridge that time. Sandy Bourke's a two-handed lead flinger an' Soda-Water Sam's no slouch. Neither's Mormon. Me, I'll be peaceable 'less it's forced on me otherwise."
They entered the split in the mesa. The cliffs shimmered in the heat, their outlines fuzzy. Branched and pillared cactus showed in gray-green reptilian growths. The soft earth, through which here and there the volcanic cores of the range were thrust, seemed as if it could supply the paint shops of a nation with almost any hue desired, ready for mixing with oil or water. Waves of heat beat between the walls of the cleft. The floor was fairly smooth, swept clean by occasional cloud-bursts, save for the skeleton of a tree and another of a too-far wandering steer, both blanched white as the alkali-crusted boulders. It was nearly level going and the car pounded along, all the occupants looking for trail sign. The mesa corridor, nowhere more than thirty feet wide, twisted and snaked, three hundred feet of sheer wall on either side topped by sloping cliffs mounting far higher toward the actual top of the mesa.
"Keep an eye peeled for rain, Phil," said Jordan, "I'd sure hate to get caught in here with a cloud-burst."
"Right," answered Phil. "I c'ud see better if I had a drink. Plimsoll, you got somethin' on the hip, ain't you?"
Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fiery unrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed. Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wall to wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steel posts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such a place was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be on Broadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, the latter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay.
"We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep. Come on."
A voice floated down to them.