“Gosh!” breathed Charmian. “Ain’t nature wonderful! Thanks for the lift, dear old thing. Well, who’s scared? Where do we go from here?” “That’s the difficulty,” said Shonto seriously. “I don’t like to risk another slide by travelling over the rubble stones again, and if we keep to this side of the cañon we won’t make half a mile an hour. And to walk up the floor of the cañon means wet feet and a continual battle with big boulders and outcroppings.” But time was of the essence of their contract. They risked the slides again. They crossed two more as large as the one on which catastrophe had threatened, then several of lesser dimensions until they went out of the district of slides. Now they worked their slow way along the same steep slope, over roots and rocks and soft black soil, mellow with decayed chaparral leaves and foamy from the heaving frost. The travelling was heart-breaking until they stepped into a deer trail by sheerest accident. Birds cheered them along their way--silent, solemn birds, but companionable in their flattering curiosity. They were very small birds with indistinguishable necks, impossible long bills, big heads, swollen breasts, dull colouring, and manners pontifical in seriousness. These were the questioning little aborigines that, on the other side of the divide, Mary Temple had called squirks, explaining that a squirk was an important little man who looked like a shabbily clothed preacher, but who made his living by taking orders for enlargements of portrait photographs. The cañon dwindled--petered out entirely on the ample breast of a hill. It that had been so jagged and yawning and formidable down below now showed no cause for its being--Vagrancy Cañon, Charmian named it because, she said, it could show no visible means of support. Over the rounded breast of the eminence they trailed and found themselves on virtually level land, on the wooded plateau of Shirttail Henry’s promise. The day was almost spent; they retraced their way back to the cañon, to where they had seen a spring. Fleecy clouds drifted across the sky, mobilizing in the west, where the reflection of the sinking sun on the far-off ocean was re-reflected on their snowy scallops--orange, cerise, and giddy yellow. They camped by the little spring. CHAPTER XVI THE CAMP IN VAGRANCY CAÑON SHONTO collected wood and built a fire, while Charmian undid the packs. At an early hour the sun sank behind the mountain peaks, and night descended fast. They cooked and ate a simple meal and wasted not a crumb, for this was a serious business that they were upon and the success of it might depend on their husbanding of food.