Gathered to the hasty and scanty supper, the cook found himself in a position of extreme discomfort, though no blame was attached to him. He had acted for the best and this result could not have been foreseen. Perhaps it was because his nerves were unusually upon the strain that he was the first to hear a sound along the chasm. He held up his hand to enjoin silence, and in a moment or two horses' hoofs and voices were heard. Then, looming unnaturally large in the last flush of twilight before the darkness fell, came two figures, one on a tall iron-gray horse, one on a mule, with a burro plodding along patiently behind. A stentorian voice hailed them from the distance. "Hey, there!" it said. "Well?" called back Masseth. The second of the oncomers answered, this time in a boy's voice. "Oh, Mr. Masseth, have you been back long?" "It's the boy," said the topographer solemnly, but with a note of joy in his voice, "and his life won't be laid at my door;" the soberness of words and tone revealing how keenly the fear of Roger's peril had been pressing on him. When the two rode up the boy introduced his frontiersman friend to the chief of the party, the while he was being untied from the saddle, to which, in his still exhausted and stiffened state, he had been fastened. But introductions, however informal, did not stop the big Westerner from speaking his mind. "I'm thinkin' there's some thunderin' big fools in this here party," he announced in his abrupt way, "that can get matters into such a hole that a youngster has to start off on a crazy trip like that, but I want to state that the boy is pay dirt all through. He's not only crossed the Canyon alone, but he's found a new trail!" "Where?" asked Masseth eagerly, thinking it wiser to ignore the stranger's criticism rather than debate the point. "Down Bright Angel Canyon, Mr. Masseth," answered the boy. "It wasn't so awfully bad, except in a few places." "But how did you get through?" "I went down by the spring," answered Roger, "keeping to the right, until I got wedged in between two cliffs, pink in color with a broad band of slate blue about two-thirds of the way up." "That's usually a bad wall!" interjected Masseth. "How did you cross it?" Roger described the device he had used, and received the encomiums of all his comrades for the work, and then, as briefly as he could, gave an outline of the various points of interest on the way. He was especially gratified, when, after telling how he had got out of the pocket of rock, Masseth turned to his assistant. "We'll chart that as Doughty Point," he said, "for the boy's sake." The boy flushed with delight at having his name given to a part of the country, just like a real explorer, and cast a grateful look at his chief.