I can see--I've
always seen--well, remember, it's man to man between you now."
During this talk they were winding under Echo Cliffs, gradually climbing,
and working up to a level with the desert, which they presently attained
at a point near the head of the canyon. The trail swerved to the left
following the base of the cliffs. The tracks of Noddle and Wolf were
plainly visible in the dust. Hare felt that if they ever led out into
the immense airy space of the desert all hope of finding Mescal must be
abandoned.
They trailed the tracks of the dog and burro to Bitter Seeps, a shallow
spring of alkali, and there lost all track of them. The path up the
cliffs to the Navajo ranges was bare, time-worn in solid rock, and showed
only the imprint of age. Desertward the ridges of shale, the washes of
copper earth, baked in the sun, gave no sign of the fugitives' course.
August Naab shrugged his broad shoulders and pointed his horse to the
cliff. It was dusk when they surmounted it.
They camped in the lee of an uplifting crag. When the wind died down the
night was no longer unpleasantly cool; and Hare, finding August Naab
uncommunicative and sleepy, strolled along the rim of the cliff, as he
had been wont to do in the sheep-herding days.
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