Nor was the danger far from past. Carried on down the slope by the momentum of their headlong rush, the plunging pony “skidded” to the very brink of the precipice. Though the man shrank down and sought to avert his face, he caught a glimpse of the black depths below them as, snorting with fear, the 4 pony wrenched himself around on the rim shelf of the edge.
For an instant––an instant that was an age of sickening suspense to his rider––the pony toppled. But before the man could shriek out his horror, the agile beast had recovered his balance and was scrambling around, away from the edge. He plunged a few yards up the slope, and stopped, wheezing and blowing.
The man flung the reins over the pony’s head and slipped to the ground. For a minute or longer he lay outstretched, limp and white-faced. When he looked up, the pony was stolidly cropping a tuft of grass. Beasts are not often troubled with imagination. The hunter remembered his brandy flask. After two long pulls at its contents, the vivid coloring began to return to his cheeks.
He rose to his feet and walked down to a ledge on the brink of the precipice with an air of bravado. But when he looked over into the chasm, he quickly shrank back and crouched on his hands and knees. Before again peering over he stretched himself out flat on the level ledge and grasped an out-jutting point of rock.
Beneath his dizzy eyes the precipitous sides of the cañon dropped away seemingly into the very bowels of the earth,––far down in sheer unbroken walls of black rock for hundreds and thousands of feet. He flattened closer to the rock on which he lay, and sought to pierce with his gaze the blue-black shadows of the 5 stupendous rift. Every nerve in his body tingled; his ankles ached with the exquisite pain of that overpowering sight.
The chasm was so narrow and its depth so great that only in one place did the noonday sun strike down through its gloomy abyss to the bottom. At that single spot he could distinguish the foam and flash of the rushing waters, but elsewhere his only evidence of the sunken torrent beneath him was the ceaseless reverberations that came rolling up out of the depths.
“Mon Dieu!” he muttered. “To think I came so near––!... Must be what they call Deep Cañon.”
He crept away from the brink. As he rose to his feet his trembling fingers automatically placed a cigarette between his lips and applied the patent lighter. Soothed by the narcotic, he stood gazing across at the far side of the cañon while he sucked in and slowly exhaled the smoke. With the last puff he touched a fresh cigarette to the butt of the first, thrust it between his lips, and snipped the cork stub over the edge into the cañon.
“There you are––take that!” he mocked the abyss.
As he turned away he drew out an extremely thin gold watch. The position of the hour hand brought a petulant frown to his white forehead. He hastened to mount his pony. Short as had been the rest, the wiry little animal had regained his wind and strength. Stung by the spurs, he plunged up the side of the ridge 6 and loped off along its level top, parallel with the cañon.