The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. Yet I could see that something had worn the ledge at the point indicated and when I stood a little distance away from the trail I could plainly note a difference in color marking the course of the trail where it led over the flinty rocks to the jumping place. “Wull, Le-loo! What’s your opinion of the Ecutock now? Do he use wings or ride a barleycorn broom?” asked Pete, with a triumphant smile. CHAPTER XIII Apparently there was no possible way by which we might hope to cross the canyon, and I threw myself prone upon the top of the stony brink of the chasm and peered down the awful abyss at the silver thread, shining in the gloom of the shadows, which marked the course of a stream, and wondered what the Boy Scouts of Troop 6 of Marlborough would do under the circumstances. I studied the face of the opposite cliff in a vain search for some hint to the solution of the problem before us, looking up and down from side to side as far as allowed by the range of my vision. At length my attention wandered to the perpendicular face of the cliff, on the top of which my body was sprawled; there was an upright crack in the face of the stone wall, and as I examined the fracture I saw that a piece of wood had lodged in the crack; a piece of wood in a crevice in a rock is not so unusual an occurrence as to excite remark; but when it occurred to me that we were then far above the timber line, my interest and curiosity were at once aroused. The end of the stick was within a short distance from my hand, and reaching down I grasped the wood and brought forth, not a short club or stick, as I thought to be concealed there, but a very long pole. The result of my investigations was so unexpected that I came dangerously near allowing the thing to slide through my fingers and fall to the bottom of the canyon. It was a neatly-smoothed, slender piece of lodge-pole pine which was brought to view, and it had a crooked root nicely spliced to one end and bound tightly in place with rawhide thongs. Big Pete was wholly absorbed in the trail, the study of which he had resumed, and when I looked up he was down on all fours, minutely studying the ground. Presently he cried, “Le-loo, tha’ pesky lad ha’ been over wha’ you be after sompen and he took it back tha’ again afore he made his jump! If you’re any good you’ll find what the lad was after.” “He was after his barleycorn broomstick,” I replied, proudly, “and here it is, although I must confess it is a pretty long one for a fellow of his size, and it looks more like a giant Bo-Peep’s crook than a witch’s broom.”