The sheep raised a dust-cloud in the sandy wash where the road wound down, and
Lucy hung back to let them get farther ahead. Gradually the tiny roar of
pattering hoofs and the blended bleating and baaing died away. The dust-cloud,
however, hung over the head of the ravine, and Lucy had to force Sarchedon
through it. Sarchedon did not mind sand and dust, but he surely hated the
smell of sheep. Lucy seldom put a spur to Sarchedon; still, she gave him a
lash with her quirt, and then he went on obediently, if disgustedly. He
carried his head like a horse that wondered why his mistress preferred to
drive him down into an unpleasant hole when she might have been cutting the
sweet, cool sage wind up on the slope.

The wash, with its sand and clay walls, dropped into a gulch, and there was an
end of green growths. The road led down over solid rock. Gradually the rims of
the gorge rose, shutting out the light and the cliffs. It was a winding road
and one not safe to tarry on in a stormy season. Lucy had seen boulders
weighing a ton go booming down that gorge during one of the sudden fierce
desert storms, when a torrent of water and mud and stone went plunging on to
the river. The ride through here was short, though slow. Lucy always had time
to adjust her faculties for the overpowering contrast these lower regions
presented. Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen
thunder of the river. The river was low, too, for otherwise there would have
been a deafening roar.

Presently she came out upon a lower branch of the canyon, into a great
red-walled space, with the river still a thousand feet below, and the cliffs
towering as high above her. The road led down along this rim where to the left
all was open, across to the split and peaked wall opposite. The river appeared
to sweep round a bold, bulging corner a mile above. It was a wide, swift,
muddy, turbulent stream. A great bar of sand stretched out from the shore.
Beyond it, through the mouth of an intersecting canyon, could be seen a clump