"The moon ought to just about hold 'til we get to the top. He
said you could ride all the way up." Without an instant's hesitation
he headed his horse for a huge mass of rock fragments that lay at the
base of an almost perpendicular wall. The others followed in single
file. Bat bringing up the rear driving the pack-horse before him.
Alice kept her horse close behind the Texan's which wormed and twisted
in and out among the rock fragments that skirted the wall. For a
quarter of a mile they proceeded with scarcely a perceptible rise and
then the cowboy turned his horse into a deep fissure that slanted
upward at a most precarious angle seemingly straight into the heart of
the mountain. Just when it seemed that the trail must end in a blind
pocket, the Texan swung into a cross fissure so narrow that the
stirrups brushed either side. So dark was it between the towering rock
walls that Alice could scarcely make out the cowboy's horse, although
at no time was he more than ten or fifteen feet in advance. After
innumerable windings the fissure led once more to the face of the
mountain and Tex headed his horse out upon a ledge that had not been
discernible from below. Alice gasped, and for a moment it seemed as
though she could not go on. Spread out before her like a huge relief
map were the ridges and black coulees of the bad lands, and directly
below--hundreds of feet below--the gigantic rock fragments lay strewn
along the base of the cliff like the abandoned blocks of a child.
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