After supper, the explorers having all come in, the boys gathered around the Sergeant and importuned him to give the history of his adventures. After reflectively bringing up the scene to view, he began: “We got into mighty close quarters! Come to think of it, I don’t see how we happened to let ourselves be caught in that dead-fall. I reckon we must have fooled ourselves some. The way of it was this. We went up on the south side as far as we could ride, and after rummaging around for a while, without finding anything, Spencer wanted to go up the North Cañon and get a good look at that mountain with one side split off; so I told the boys to look about for themselves, as there were no Indians in the valley. Some of them went on up the South Cañon, and the rest of us went over to the North Cañon. After crossing the upper ford, Spencer and I concluded to walk up the cañon, so we sent our animals down to graze with the herd. Spencer looked a good long while at that split mountain, and called it a ‘half dome.’ I concluded he might name it what he liked, if he would leave it and go to camp; for I was getting tired and hungry and said so. Spencer said ‘All right, we’ll go to camp.’ On our way down, as we passed that looking-glass pond, he wanted to take one more look, and told me to go ahead and he’d soon overtake me; but that I wouldn’t do, so he said: “No matter, then; I can come up some other time.” As we came on down the trail below the pond, I saw some acorns scattered by the side of the trail, and told Spencer there were Indians not far off. After looking about for a while Spencer found a basket nearly full behind some rocks, and in a little while discovered a trail leading up towards the cliff. We followed this up a piece, and soon found several baskets of acorns. I forgot about being hungry, and after talking the matter over we decided to make a sort of reconnoissance before we came in to make any report. Well, we started on up among the rocks until we got to a mighty steep place, a kind of gulch that now looked as if it had been scooped out for a stone battery. The trail up it was as steep as the roof on a meeting-house, and worn so slippery that we couldn’t get a foot-hold. I wanted to see what there was above, and took off my boots and started up. Spencer did the same and followed me. I had just got to the swell of the steepest slope, where a crack runs across the face of the wall, and was looking back to see if Spencer would make the riffle, when I heard a crash above me, and saw a rock as big as a hogshead rolling down the cliff toward us. I sprang on up behind a rock that happened to be in the right place, for there was no time to hunt for any other shelter.