Through this plateau Roger rode slowly, enjoying its peacefulness the while. No great hurry consumed him, his present work was done, and until he reached Prescott, he was his own master. Duke, moreover, had fared ill in the hard riding of the past few weeks, and so it was by very easy stages that the boy crossed the Kaibab, and indeed, loafed one whole week in the wonderful De La Motte Park, in the midst of the plateau, to give his horse a rest and to let him fill out his bones a little on the succulent grasses. A most beautiful country to enter--and a hard one to leave. No artificial maze is more confusing, for enticing as the ravines are, they are all exactly alike, no landmarks exist by which a direction may be followed, and the valleys themselves wind and double like a frightened hare. Roger, however, had crossed this forest the first time with the frontiersman, who knew the trails like a book, and he had learned the general lie of the country from him. Besides, the lad had imbibed enough woodcraft since his appointment on the Survey to enable him to follow a trail, no matter how faint or tortuous, a thing which even the Mormon herders who follow the mazes of the wood with a keenness equal to that of the Indians, and with more intelligence, admit is a difficult thing to do. But idleness was in no sense a characteristic of Roger's make-up, and he was glad when he reached Stewart's Canyon, where the main trail took a direct road northwards to round the Dragon and the Little Dragon and to skirt the Virgin Range still further to the northward. But as the trail descended into the valley and the altitude became less, it was seen that Paradise was left behind. Instead of pines and aspens, the ferocious and forbidding cactus took its place. The yuccas or Spanish bayonets, the prickly pear, the gaunt Sahaura and the spiny devil, together with other truculent barbarians of the vegetable kingdom convinced the boy that he had left behind all the attractive part of his trip. To the west, Roger quickened his pace and passed over the Shewitz plateau, crossing stretches of lava, black and recent-looking, as though they had been erupted but a few years before. Then, coming to the famous geological break in the rocks known as the Hurricane Fault, he turned sharply to the south through the plain uninteresting territory of Eastern Nevada and California and reached the Needles again with little trouble to himself or Duke. By this time Roger felt quite at home in and about the Canyon, and he was conscious of boyish pride when the proprietor of El Garces, the big hotel at the Needles, welcomed him as an old traveler.