Big John headed his horse up across the slope. “Come on, son!” he called to Scotty. “We’ll ooze for a point an’ watch which way the varmint goes. He mought turn an’ come back up, an’ he’d git away if no one was up here.” Immediately they topped the slope, the white mustang began to race off through the dense young timber that covered the promontory. Scotty drove in his spurs and hung low over his saddle, guarding his eyes from the slap of branches. It took some riding to keep up with Big John! After a time the ground pitched down dizzily. Through the trees Scotty got glimpses of the purple void out there, and above him rose the long lines of pinnacles of yellow buttes. Far down below he could hear the constant chiming of the hounds. The chase was crossing their front. Then the trees grew suddenly sparse and short below them, and Big John reined the white mustang sharply up on his haunches where he slid with all four hoofs braced in the crumbly soil. It was awful, on ahead! The land seemed to end nowhere, with unheard-of voids below. Looking up, Scotty could see the yellow cliffs frowning high above him, now, while the clayey rock they were standing in was reddish. “Right yere’s whar we ties up and takes to shank’s mare!” said Big John, dismounting, tethering his mustang to a stout sapling and taking off his lariat coil. Scotty followed suit, wondering how they were ever going to get up again. And then a queer shiver of realization burst upon him. This red rock was only the next below the _top_ of all those long bars of color that line the infinite slopes of the Grand Canyon! They slid down to the brink of the ledge and looked over. A great slope, acres in area and covered with sparse timber, appeared below. Ruler was streaking down through it, volleying his approval of the trail. Almost vertically below Scotty was Pepper’s sturdy back, the hound hesitating over the passage of some shelf below him. Bourbon and Lee were far up the slope, while the small figures of the Colonel, Sid and the Navaho could be seen far above to the left, sliding down a high roof of yellow clay. A sheer fall of two hundred feet lay directly in front of them. It seemed nothing at all in this abyss of infinite distances. Big John ran along the brink of it, dislodging stones which shot out, to hit the slope below after a tense interval of fall, and then go bounding on down to disappear from sight over the brink of shelves that led on down to yet lower depths. Scotty worked after him, somewhat more cautiously, but with none of the respect that he would have had for such a precipice as this anywhere else. His sense of proportion was utterly lost here.