Insensibly the mental burden of loneliness, the nameless dread of things unseen and incomprehensible, lightened. The strained look left his eyes; the lines in his face relaxed as if he slept and, sleeping, forgot the worries of his waking hours. The world around him was so big, so quiet--the forces of nature were so invincible in their strength--that the cares of one small human being seemed as pettily unimportant as the scurrying of a lizard down the road. It occurred to Gary whimsically that the lizard’s panicky retreat before the approaching cataclysm of the horse’s shadow was very real and tremendously important--to the lizard. Quite as important, no doubt, as the complexity of emotions that filled the human soul of a certain Gary Marshall in Johnnywater Cañon. And the great butte that stood in its immutable strength under the buffetings of wind and sun and rain looked alike upon the troubles of the lizard and of Gary Marshall. “After all, Jazz, we haven’t got such a heck of a lot to worry about. If I was a jack rabbit I reckon I’d still have troubles of my own. Take your ears off your neck, Jazz, and shack along. Packing me over to Kawich isn’t the worst thing could happen you, you lazy brute.” Gradually it dawned upon Gary that the road was creeping around the great butte that held Johnnywater Cañon gashed into the side turned toward the southeast. He wondered if the place called Kawich might not be just across the butte from Johnnywater. There was a certain comfort in the thought that Monty might not be so far from him, after all. Above him towered the bold outline of the butte, capped by the sheer wall of rock that rose like a cliff above its precipitous slopes. The trail itself followed the line of least resistance through the wrinkles formed in the foothills when this old world was cooling. But however deep the cañon, wherever the winding trail led, always the butte stood high-shouldered and grim just under the clouds. Gary could not wonder at the dilapidated condition of Monty’s Ford, when he saw the trail it had been compelled to travel. He ate his lunch beside a little spring that trickled out from beneath a rock just above the trail. Another hour’s riding brought him into the very dooryard of a camp which he judged was Monty’s, though no one appeared in answer to his call.