“No use goin’ on now—we’ll be in the cañon in half an hour and can’t take no chances. Goin’ to be a clear night, and cold as hell. Why don’t preachers make hell a cold place, Perfesser? Dad blame if I can see anythin’ ornery in hell the way it’s laid out. I bet it aint no hotter’n the Ralston Desert up in Nevada, and that don’t stack up noways alongside what Imperial Valley used to be ’fore they started growin’ melons and garden truck there. Reckon I’m goin’ to freeze tonight ’thout no fire, but can’t be helped. Let’s git our victuals washed down, and then we’ll mosey along and take it easy till dark.” When the sun was down, they moved on again, and before the last of the daylight died into the starry radiance of night, Ramsay descried the lines of the cañon opening out from the general mass of hills ahead. The night was clear, with a thin green-silver crescent of moon hanging high, but nothing could be seen of the environment, though old Sagebrush plodded along without a pause. A little later he broke into speech. “Trail. No talkin’, now. Watch out underfoot.” A trail indeed—at least, a path beaten by the hoofs of horses. Sagebrush had need to mind his own warning, for the next moment he jumped sharply aside, dropped his pack and picked up the nearest rock to crush a sidewinder in his path. After this both men kept a sharper watch for the nocturnal reptiles than on the surrounding scenery. They had proceeded perhaps two miles when Ramsay found the cañon walls closing in ahead, apparently forming an unbroken barrier. Then he began to appreciate the strategic value of the place, which to anyone on the search would appear to be an empty cañon, while in reality there was a narrow passage opening into a second but completely hidden cañon. This was a freak of erosion and wind-carving, for the trail led them sharply to the right, and then into a black hole—a widening cleft in the rock, ten feet in width and twenty through to the other side. Sagebrush halted his companion and stole forward cautiously, then summoned Ramsay. The opening was unguarded. Passing through, both men came to an astonished halt. They stood in an almost circular bowl which, so far as the deceptive light told them, was not more than a mile in diameter, closed in by gigantic walls of rock which, on the side opposite them, presented only blackness which was illumined by three yellow pin-points. “Lamps,” said Sagebrush. “Got some shacks over there, by gosh!” It was not this which had startled them both, however. In their immediate vicinity were great masses of jumbled rock, fallen from the walls that hemmed in the entrance. At a distance of fifty feet from them the scattered rock and sand gave place to a thick green carpet which seemed to cover the entire bowl, and across this carpet moved masses of horses, quietly grazing.