“But he didn’t tell all of this,” Norton informed her.  “The Indian died without guessing what I have told you.  He merely knew that the rifles were here because Galloway had employed him to bring them and because he was the man who told Galloway of this hiding-place.  He believed that Galloway’s whole scheme was to smuggle a lot of arms and ammunition south and across the border, selling to the Mexicans.  But from what little he could tell Chavez and from what we found out for ourselves, the whole play became pretty obvious.  No, Galloway hasn’t been talking and he has been playing as safe as a man can upon such business as this.  His luck was against him, that’s all, when the Indian died and insisted on being rung out by the San Juan bells.  There’s always that little element of chance in any business, legitimate or otherwise. . . .  And now, if you’ll finish your breakfast I’ll show you a view you’ll never forget and then we’ll hit the trail.”

“But, Mr. Lane,” she asked, “you don’t intend to leave him here all alone?  He will get well with the proper attention; but be must have that.”

“Within another hour or so,” Norton told her, “Tom Cutter will be back with one of Brocky’s cowboys.  They’ll move Lane into a canon on the other side of the mountain.  Oh, I know he oughtn’t to be moved, but what else can we do?  Besides, Brocky insists on it.  Then they’ll arrange to take care of him; if necessary you’ll come out again to-morrow night?”

“Of course,” she said.  She went to Brocky and held out her hand to him.  “I understand now, I think, why you would refuse to die, no matter how badly you were hurt, until you had helped Mr. Norton finish the work you have set your hands to.  It’s an honor, Mr. Lane, to have a patient like you.”

Whereupon Brocky Lane grew promptly crimson and tongue-tied.

“And now the view, Mr. Norton, and I am ready to go.”

He led the way to the outer ledge from which last night they had entered the cave.

“In daylight you can see half round the world from here,” he said as they stood with their backs to the rock.  “Now you can get an idea of what it’s like.”

Below her was the chasm formed by these cliffs standing sheer and fronting other tall cliffs looming blackly, the stars beginning to fade in the sky above them.  Norton pushed a stone outward with his boot; she heard it strike, rebound, strike again . . . and then there was silence; when the falling stone reached the bottom no sound came back to tell her how far it had dropped.

Turning a little to look southward, she saw the cliffs standing farther and farther back on each side so that the eye might travel between them and out over the lower slopes and the distant stretches of level land which, more now than ever, seemed a great limitless sea.  The stars were paling rapidly; the first glint of the new day was in the air, the world lay shadowy and silent and lifeless, softened in the seeming, but, as in the daytime, slumbrous under an atmosphere of brooding mystery.