If Venters had not been indubitably certain that he had entered
the right canyon his astonishment would not have been so great.
There had been no breaks in the walls, no side canyons entering
this one where the rustlers' tracks and the cattle trail had
guided him, and, therefore, he could not be wrong. But here the
canyon ended, and presumably the trails also.
"That cattle trail headed out of here," Venters kept saying to
himself. "It headed out. Now what I want to know is how on earth
did cattle ever get in here?"
If he could be sure of anything it was of the careful scrutiny he
had given that cattle track, every hoofmark of which headed
straight west. He was now looking east at an immense round boxed
corner of canyon down which tumbled a thin, white veil of water,
scarcely twenty yards wide. Somehow, somewhere, his calculations
had gone wrong. For the first time in years he found himself
doubting his rider's skill in finding tracks, and his memory of
what he had actually seen. In his anxiety to keep under cover he
must have lost himself in this offshoot of Deception Pass, and
thereby in some unaccountable manner, missed the canyon with the
trails. There was nothing else for him to think. Rustlers could
not fly, nor cattle jump down thousand-foot precipices. He was
only proving what the sage-riders had long said of this
labyrinthine system of deceitful canyons and valleys--trails led
down into Deception Pass, but no rider had ever followed them.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93