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.

On a sudden he heard above the soft roar of the waterfall an unusual sound that he could not define.  He dropped flat behind a stone and listened.  From the direction he had come swelled something that resembled a strange muffled pounding and splashing and ringing.  Despite his nerve the chill sweat began to dampen his forehead.  What might not be possible in this stonewalled maze of mystery?  The unnatural sound passed beyond him as he lay gripping his rifle and fighting for coolness.  Then from the open came the sound, now distinct and different.  Venters recognized a hobble-bell of a horse, and the cracking of iron on submerged stones, and the hollow splash of hoofs in water.

Relief surged over him.  His mind caught again at realities, and curiosity prompted him to peep from behind the rock.

In the middle of the stream waded a long string of packed burros driven by three superbly mounted men.  Had Venters met these dark-clothed, dark-visaged, heavily armed men anywhere in Utah, let alone in this robbers’ retreat, he would have recognized them as rustlers.  The discerning eye of a rider saw the signs of a long, arduous trip.  These men were packing in supplies from one of the northern villages.  They were tired, and their horses were almost played out, and the burros plodded on, after the manner of their kind when exhausted, faithful and patient, but as if every weary, splashing, slipping step would be their last.

All this Venters noted in one glance.  After that he watched with a thrilling eagerness.  Straight at the waterfall the rustlers drove the burros, and straight through the middle, where the water spread into a fleecy, thin film like dissolving smoke.  Following closely, the rustlers rode into this white mist, showing in bold black relief for an instant, and then they vanished.