“Gee-roo! Things are done on a big scale out here!” exclaimed Sid as he surveyed it, dismayed. “You could drop a whole eastern state in the mouth of this canyon and it would never be missed! No wonder there are whole ruined cities on the floor as well as the walls of Cheyo!” he cried, ruefully, as he began to wonder how his party would ever find him in all this vast expanse of cliff and valley.
But it would narrow further up, he reassured himself. If he could find the mouth of Monument Canyon and hang around there they would surely pick him up. For miles he rode up a flat level floor, green and watered with a brook, while on both sides frowned parapets like the Palisades of the Hudson, about the same height, yet narrowed in closer, so that their grandeur and majesty hemmed him in. Up under the sheer cliffs he could see great hollowed-out caves, with stone ruins peeping out under them, walls shattered and torn, square stone watch towers with their upper stories thrown down, and a detritus of destroyed masonry scattered down the steep, tree-grown slopes.
Then a narrow side canyon attracted him. It would be fun to ride up to it and camp there for the night, thought Sid, besides being out of the main canyon and away from possible visits of passing Navahos who might take into their heads to rob a lonely boy camping out. He turned up it, winding his pony through great spruces and firs that rose out of its moist bottom, watered by a little runnel. The stratified stone ledges of the cliffs were moss-covered at their bases. High up through the cleft he could see the blue sky, with yellow sunlight striking the spires of western yellow pines that seemed like pygmy Japanese trees up there from where he was. It was already dim down in here.
Swiftly the twilight grew, while the pony slowed to a walk, his feet not making a sound in the soft duff. It was growing eerie and mysterious in here, thought Sid, as a slight shiver ran through him, and he now wished he had stayed out in the open valley. But he fought back that wish as cowardly and foolish. Men did not turn back from what they had once set their hand to!
Then a stick cracked, somewhere behind him. Sid reined up and listened. All was still as death; even the birds had gone to roost in the dim twilight of the chasm. But Pinto’s actions told him that that noise was not imagination. His pony’s ears lay flat back and he was shivering all over with fear!
Sid watched, intently, down the chasm. He thought he saw a bush move. A second’s concentration on it told him it had moved, for the tips of its lower branches still vibrated. He reached down and drew his army carbine out of its scabbard. For some minutes Sid watched the bush, his heart beating with excitement. A more experienced man than he would have hummed a shot into it to smoke out whatever might be lurking there.
But after a time he turned away and urged the pony slowly ahead. The horse jumped as the spurs touched him, and Sid had a wrangle to quiet him at all. They paced on, slowly, both listening behind them, for Pinto’s ears had not pricked forward at all. An uncanny sense that they were being followed,—by something—in the chasm, persisted. Several times Sid looked back, rifle at ready, urged by some half-heard noise.
A likely camping spot, a little dent in the chasm walls showed up ahead, and, as it was getting dark, Sid decided to stop here and make camp for the night, still keeping a wary eye out for whatever beast it was that was stalking them.
He dismounted and picketed Pinto in a little grass swale. Then he cleared away a space for his fire in the needles that lay under the clump of silver spruces in the dent. He was gathering sticks for it when Pinto gave a snort of terror and tugged frantically at his halter. Sid yelled at him, for his eyeballs showed white with fright. He snatched up his rifle to peer down the chasm. Then a shock of alarm went through him, as his eye fastened on a motionless head—looking at them from over a ledge that jutted out from the canyon walls high up. Big, round, and coal-black it was! No ears showed—they must have been laid back flat—but a green and phosphorescent flash came from the two eyes in it that glared at them.
Sid’s rifle sprang to shoulder and the red spurt of flame from its muzzle split the semidarkness.