"Gits dark mighty quick up here," said the girl.
A great cloud was ballooning above them, like a dirigible that had lost buoyancy and was bumping along the mesa ridge. Its belly was black, its western side ruddy in the sunset. Sandy viewed it apprehensively. In superficial survey the mesa seemed much like the stranded carcass of a mastodonic creature left behind when the waters departed from these inland seas. A hard skeleton of igneous rock, with clayey soil for flesh, riven and seamed and pitted, crumbling and dusty in the sun, ever disintegrating with wind and water and frost. Under a rain the trail was slimy as a whale's back. The cloud was soggy with moisture. Bursting, it would send torrents roaring down every ravine, wash out weathered masses of earth, sweep all before it as it gathered forces and rushed out on the desert, leaving the main cañons carved a little richer, the surface of the soil on the sink a little deeper, against the time when men should control these storm waters or bring the precious fluid up from underground reservoirs and make the desert blossom like the rose.
Where Molly and Sandy rode they were exposed to the first drench of a cloud-burst. Deeper in the pass, where the flood would be confined, their chance for escape would be infinitesimal. Even on the heights it would be precarious unless they could cross the remainder of the up-trail before the inevitable downpour.
Sandy examined his own cinch and tightened it before he mounted. And he whispered something in the mare's ear that caused her to lip his sleeve.
"Let yore hawss have his own way, Molly," he said. "I'm lettin' Goldie do the pickin' fo' the lead. Ready?"
It was growing cold in the deepening twilight, the belt of sunshine was rapidly climbing toward the topmost palisades with the purple shadows in the gorge mounting, twisting and eddying in skeins of mist, twining up toward them. One spire ahead glowed golden. The cloud drifted down upon it, glooming and glowing on its sunset side. The crag pierced it, ripped it as it glided along, like the knife of a diver in the belly of a shark. A cold wind blew from the riven mass. Then came the hiss of descending waters. There was neither thunder nor lightning, only the steady rush of the rain that glazed the slippery trail, hid the opposing cliff from sight, sheeting it with dull silver, pounding, pitting, beating at them as they plodded doggedly on, almost blinded, trusting to the instinct of their horses.
Through the steady patter began to sound the savage voice of torrents falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh seemed sodden, her hands and wrists began to puff and she saw their flesh was purple in the fading light. She rode with hands on the saddle horn, her head bowed, water streaming from the rim of her Stetson, the thud of the rain on her tired shoulders heavy as shot. The bay slipped, lurched, scrambled frantically for footing, hind feet skidding in the clay, haunches gathering desperately, heaving beneath her to the effort that brought him back to the trail. She saw Sandy ahead, dimly, like a sheeted ghost, twisted in his saddle, watching her. From the hips down he was a part of the mare he rode, from waist up he was in such exquisite balance while keeping his individuality apart from the horse that, despite her present misery and a presentiment of coming evil that was beginning to encompass her, Molly realized what a magnificent rider he was, and clung to his strength and skill, sensing the comforting power of his manhood.
To her right was the cliff, slimy with water, the trail so narrow that now and then her elbow dug into the soft stuff. To the left was blackness out of which mists ascended, writhing, like steamy vapors, the rain pelting into the gulf, far, far below; the thunder of augmenting waters. Masses of broken cloud swept on above their heads, purple and crimson and orange as they streamed across the summit like the tattered banners of a routed army. The light rayed upward at an acute angle. In a few moments it would be dark. But they were close to the top. The mare already stood on a level ledge of side-jutting rock, a horizontal protuberance that marked the extreme height of the Pass of the Goats, from which one could look down into the cañon of the oaks and the unfailing stream.
Sandy heard a cry from Molly and saw, through the curtain of the falling rain, the wide-flared nostrils of her horse, its eyes protruding as the brute, with the ground slopping away beneath him, slid slowly down toward the gulf, the girl, her weight flung forward on the withers, her face white as paper, turning to him mutely for help. It was a bad moment. Sandy and his mount stood upon an island in a shifting sea. The whole cliff seemed working and crawling, slithering down.
He had no space to turn in, no chance to whirl his lariat, even for a side throw. There was no time to spin a loop. But his hand detached the rope, flying fingers found the free end as he pivoted in the saddle, thighs welded to the mare.