He reined up and caught at a pine bough.  A sight to hold the eye of any forester held his; the enormous trunk of a fallen giant, a dozen dwarfs growing from its punk, spanned the gully.  Wayland slid off his horse.  The great trunk lay destitute of lesser branches to the tip on the far side of the chasm like great characters that discard mannerisms.

The Ranger struck his Service axe into the trunk.  The bark held firm, though he heard the ring of the dry-rot at the heart that had brought the old giant crashing down to become food for the scrubs and pigmies of the forest.  Wayland picked out two spindly birches.  Quick strokes brought them down.  Walking out on the dead trunk, he threw a birch on each side as a guard rail, affording fence, not protection, to the wavering faith of a shy horse, “all a feeling of security to steady a giddy head,” he reflected.  He led the little pack mule; and the bronchos followed.  A moment later, he was galloping through the larches and low juniper that fringed the Mesas above the Rim Rock trail, the mule huff-huffing to the fore snatching mouthfuls on the run.  Then, with a lope, Wayland’s broncho leaped out on the bare sage-grown Mesas, the mule with ears pointed, nose high, heading straight for the white canvas-top of a tented wagon.

For a moment, the light blinded Wayland’s sight; for the sun had come up in an orange fan; and the sky was not blue:  it shone the dazzling silver of mercury.  Against the high rarefied air came in view the figure of a man, grotesquely exaggerated, head and shoulders first, then body, riding a heavy horse, saddleless, hatless, coatless, white of hair, heels pressed to his horse’s flanks, bent far over the animal’s neck as Indians ride, galloping for the Rim Rock trail, or a second jump from the battlements.

Wayland stood up in his stirrups and with hands trumpeted uttered a yell.  The rider jerked his horse to a rear flounder, waved frantically, then split the air—­

“Glory be to the powers—­but—­A’m glad to see you!  A’ve headed them off from the South trail.  We’ve got them, Wayland, the low dastard scoundrels!  We’ve got them trapped like rats in a trap!  They’re in the Pass if you’ve a man in the Valley with spirit enough to get out with a gun!” He stopped for breath as the two horses floundered together.

“We haven’t,” answered Wayland.

“They jumped the gully!  Man alive, y’ ought t’ seen them jump the gully!  A slammed them right down into the bottom of it.  A would to God ’t had been to the bottomless pit.  The same gentry A saw that night under your Ridge, saving his High Mightiness.  The evil fellow wi’ the sheep hide leggings, an’ the one armed blackguard in the cow-boy slicker, an’ the corduroy dandy wi’ the red tie, an’ four more of them same card-sharp gentry.  A rode ‘long the top of y’r gully an’ poured six bullets after ’em!  Man alive!  A heard the fellow in the yellow slicker yell bloody