Out of the peril of the situation a spirit of recklessness seemed to have descended upon him. He could have shouted aloud as he felt the active bounds of the cayuse. One hurried glance at the awful gap before him gave the boy a rough estimate of its width--ten feet or more. A tremendous leap for a pony. But it must be done. "Yip-yip," yelled Rob once more, as he dug his spurs in deep, and the maddened pony gave one tremendous bound that brought it right to the edge of the pit. [Illustration: Then the brave buckskin gathered its limbs for the leap.] For one sickening instant it paused, and Rob felt the chill fear of death sweep over him. Then the brave buckskin gathered its limbs for the leap. Like steel springs its tough muscles rebounded, and the yelling, shrieking cow-punchers saw a buckskin body, surmounted by a cheering boy, give a great leap upward and--alight safe on the farther side of the chasm. Cheer after cheer went up, while Rob waved his hat exultantly and yelled back at his friends. Nothing like that leap for life had ever been witnessed before. The amazed cattle, cheated of their prey, wavered, and the leaders tried in vain to check themselves. Desperately they dug their forefeet into the edge of the gulch, but the treacherous lip of the chasm gave under their weight, and with a roar and rattle, a cloud of dust and a despairing bellow, four of them shot over the edge and vanished. Rob could not repress a shudder as he patted his buckskin, and realized that but for the little steed's noble effort he might have shared the fate of the dumb brutes. Before long the cow-punchers had the rest of the steers rounded up, and ready to be driven back to the Far Pasture. Many were the threats breathed against the Moquis as they did so. The cattle, as is the nature of these half-wild brutes, having had their run out, seemed inclined to collapse from fatigue. As long as unreasoning terror held sway among them they had galloped tirelessly, but now their legs shook under them and they quivered and drooped pitifully. But the cattlemen showed them no mercy. With loud yells and popping of revolvers and cracking of quirts, they rode round them, getting them together into a compact mass. While all this was going on, Rob had ridden his buckskin along the edge of the gulch. Some two miles below the place where his leap had been made, he found a spot which seemed favorable for crossing. The pony slid down one bank on its haunches and clambered up the other like a cat. As the boy traversed the bottom of the Graveyard, he noticed a peculiarly offensive odor. The smell which offended his nostrils, he found, sprang from the carcasses of the cattle which had at various times fallen into the gulch, above where he was crossing. "Wonder why they don't put up a fence here," thought the boy.