I believed
I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go after him. I tied
Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off spurs and chaps, and
remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened a red bandana to the top
of a dead snag to show me where to come up on my way out. Then I
carefully strapped my canteen and camera on my back, made doubly
secure my revolver, put on my heavy gloves, and started down. And I
realized at once that only so lightly encumbered should I have ever
ventured down the slope.
Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there cedar
trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A precipice
stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and almost instantly saw
the yellow gleam of a lion in a tree-top.
"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.
I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay under me,
a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering smoky canyon.
All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope, green jumble of
cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff walls, leaning yellow
crags--an awful hole. But I could get down, and that was all I cared
for. I ran along to the left, jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven
stones with sure, swift feet, and came to where the cliff ended in
weathered slope and scaly bench.
It was like a game, going down that canyon.
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