At an early hour next morning the seven were again in the saddle, traveling through fields of waving yellow bunch grass. They followed an almost straight course to a point where the hills were sharply cleft, forming a wide, deep gorge. Through the center trickled a tiny stream bordered with scrubby willows. The rough, scarred hills on either hand ended abruptly, and, beyond, a series of ridges, some thickly covered with pine, others of bald, reddish rock, rolled off in crests, rising higher and higher until they joined the stupendous mass of Mount Wanatoma.
The vastness of nature impressed the boys strangely.
"Honest, it makes me feel like a little crawling ant," remarked Tim, with a deep breath.
"An' you look the part, all right, Timmy-Tim," grinned Jack. "An' Tommy! Why, he's 'most disappeared."
"Oh, you get out, Jacky. There's not such an awful lot of you, either," retorted Tom, stiffly. "Besides," he added, "I'm a half inch taller'n I was in Wyoming; honest, I am."
"Goodness gracious! Look at the giant!" chirped Jack. "Measure yourself every day, I s'pose?"
"By the time we reach the gold mine, he'll be a six-footer," laughed Tim.
"That's all right; I may be looking down on you some day, smarty," snorted Tom.
To the north! was the slogan; yet they were as often compelled to struggle east or west, pushed aside by huge barriers of rock or impenetrable forests.
About one o'clock the boys dismounted near the mouth of a gloomy canyon. On the frowning slopes of "Mount Wanatoma" they saw masses of dark, rich pines, gigantic piles of rock, and precipices with sheer drops of hundreds of feet. And there was a cascade, too; a thin dash of white tumbling from a dizzy ledge, growing broader as it fell, until, at the bottom, it spread out sharply into a fan-shaped form, glittering in the sunlight.