The Morgan trail

by W. C. Tuttle

Hashknife realized that Dave Morgan would have to be deaf not to have heard it; but there was no turning back now. He was riding the rump of the gray, his feet drawn back as far as possible to escape the brush.

Slipping and sliding, careening from side to side, the tall gray took him safely to the bottom of the cañon, where he dismounted. He had lost Morgan’s trail, and there did not seem to be any way of recovering it. The bottom of the cañon at this point was a jumble of broken sandstone, boulders, and brush, which seemed an impassable barrier to man and beast; but Hashknife knew there must be a way out.

The cañon was about six miles in length, and Hashknife had entered it at about a mile below the north end. After waiting a while, trying to figure out where Morgan had gone, Hashknife picked up his reins and started trying to pick out a route down the cañon.

It was slow traveling. Time after time he was obliged to retrace his steps and select a new route. For over a mile he managed to find his way. But he was paying for it. His overall-clad legs were flapping rags, and the knees of the tall gray were torn and bleeding.

‘Tough goin’, Ghost,’ grinned Hashknife. ‘If we ever go the length of this cañon, we deserve a medal.’

At last he came to a place where he could not find a way through. The cañon narrowed to a box-like affair, not over sixty feet in width, with perpendicular sides, a hundred feet high.

Back went Hashknife and the gray horse to a point about three hundred yards away, where they began climbing the east side of the cañon. It was slow work, but they managed to get above the perpendicular sides of the box cañon.

And it was here that Hashknife was rewarded for his labor. Cut deeply in the side of the hill were the tracks of a horse which had come down the side of the cañon at this point. Hashknife studied the situation, and from his point of view Dave Morgan had cut back to the top of the cañon again, and had tried the descent at another place.

But this time Hashknife was careful to follow the tracks, which kept to the side of the hill, until reaching the sheer cliffs, less than a mile above where Nan and Rex had found the cave, where they descended again to the bottom of the cañon. Hashknife stopped near the cliffs and scanned the country. Far above him and across the cañon, he could see the tiny scars which indicated graded curves on the wagon road. Far down the cañon he could see a few buzzards, spiraling upward from the cañon bed.

That was where he wanted to go—down where the buzzards were. It was another hard slide down the cañon, but they made it in safety. For some distance the trail led down the bottom of the cañon, where the tracks in the sand made it easy to follow the spoor of the other horse.