“You can bet your last blue chip on the fact that I am taking no chances of a hoss throwing you or cutting up rusty while you’re on his back,” the man returned earnestly. “Hardscrabble is all right, Miss Betty.” He offered his hand to Betty for her to step into with all the grace of a courtier. He looked up into her eyes, too, as she mounted past his shoulder into the saddle, and his smile was so friendly that she could not help smiling in return. Hunt swung himself on to his own mount—a rather rangy cayuse that promised speed as well as endurance. Hurley bounded into his own saddle from the step without touching the stirrups until he was seated. Bouncer stood up on his hind legs, snorted, came down stiff-legged, and bucked once just to show that he was in fine fettle. The other horses cantered away from the hotel more sedately. They spattered through the West Fork and went into the canyon along the river trail. There was not a soul in sight but themselves when they turned the first out-thrust of the cliff. Runaway River brawled in its bed. The huge, threatening cap of the Overhang cast its shadow almost to the opposite wall. The mighty rocks, the deep cracks in which the brush clung with tenuous roots, the wind-wrung, anguished, stunted trees, all held the visitors spellbound. Such a devil’s slot in the hills they could never have imagined without actually seeing it. “Suppose that should fall?” Betty broke out pointing up at the frowning cap of the cliff. “That’s what we are supposing all the time, Miss Betty,” replied Hurley quietly. “Part of it did fall about twenty years ago. That was long before my time, of course. But Bill Judson and some of the other old-timers can tell you about it. It came pretty near ringing the death-knell for Canyon Pass.” “Backed up the river into the town, did it?” asked the logical Hunt. “I’ll say it did! And over the town. Judson says it was so deep over his store that he went out from the headlands in a flatboat and grappled through the skylight of his joint for tobacco out of the showcase. Takes that old-timer to spread it on thick,” and he chuckled. “But is it likely to happen again?” cried Betty. “Any day—any hour—any minute,” repeated Hurley quietly. “There are thousands of tons of stuff up there that may fall. Choke the canyon half-wall high. If it does, there’ll be a lake here that’ll furnish water enough to irrigate blame near all of the Topaz Desert—believe me. Canyon Pass will have to go into raising frogs or such,” and he laughed. “Oh! I felt that it was a dangerous place to live in,” murmured Betty. “Great saltpeter!” exclaimed Hurley again. “No worse than folks who live on the sides of volcanoes in Italy, for instance. Or in the earthquake belt along the Pacific coast. Pshaw!” “But—but there is so much room out here, Mr. Hurley,” cried Betty. “Why not choose a safer place in which to establish a town?”