He had just resolved on this, leaped over a creek stealing down far behind El Capitan, got full in sight of the roaring rapids, when he heard a step behind him and looked up to see Indian Bill himself coming. The old trapper was a well-known character in the mountains. His great brown feet looking out beneath torn blue overalls, his dark-skinned chest wrapped in a blanket of many colors, his long straight hair falling from beneath a well-worn sombrero, formed a familiar sight all over those mountains. Those feet had tramped every mountain pass and rugged trail and had climbed every lofty peak for a hundred miles about the Yosemite. His approach was a glad surprise to Job. He could wish no better companion over that lonely trail which led along the precipitous sides of the canyon, with straight walls towering above it and steep descents reaching below to the Merced's angry waters, which dash for twenty miles over gigantic boulders with a fury unrivaled by Niagara itself. Soon Indian Bill was driving away Job's gloom as, in his queer dialect, he told one of his trapper stories while the two swung on at regular gait, close upon each other's heels. Over the steep grades, through the deep, shaded ravines, and along the bare cliffs on that narrow trail, they went. They had gone a mile down the stream, when Job noticed something moving, high on the opposite cliff. He called his companion's attention to it, and the keen-eyed Indian said it was a horseman mounted on a black steed. Job thought of Jane, but at once said to himself that it could not be she--she was back at Camp Comfort by this time. A little later, Bill said the horse was now riderless and standing by a tree, and that a bit of something white was moving on the face of the cliff. Just then they heard a terrible roar, and both forgot all else in the queer sensation that seized them. All the world seemed to sway before Job's eyes. The mountains below, where the river bends, seemed a thing of life. His feet slipped on the narrow edge of a steep cliff he was crossing, the gravel beneath gave way, and Job found himself lying at the foot of a steep incline, while a whole fusillade of stones was flying past him. A moment, and it was over, and the Indian said: "Ugh! Heap big earthquake! Great Spirit mad! Come."