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Venters saddled and led hi astride, rode up the canyon, with Ring and Whitie trotting behind An old grass-grown trail followed the course of a shallohere flowed a thin stream of water The canyon was a hundred rods wide, its yelloalls were perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant growth of oak and pinon For five , and then began a heightening of rugged walls and a deepening of the floor Beyond this point of sudden change in the character of the canyon Venters had never explored, and here was the real door to the intricacies of Deception Pass

He reined Wrangle to a walk, halted now and then to listen, and then proceeded cautiously with shifting and alert gaze The canyon assumed proportions that dwarfed those of its first tenin the interest of his wide surroundings any of his caution or keen search for tracks or sight of living thing If there ever had been a trail here, he could not find it He rode through sage and clu-petaled purple lilies blooh a dark constriction of the pass no wider than the lane in the grove at Cottonwoods And he cae towering corners of a confluences of intersecting canyons

Venters sat his horse, and, with a rider's eye, studied this wild cross-cut of huge stone gullies Then he went on, guided by the course of running water If it had not been for thenorth he would never have been able to tell which of thosethis a little strea the outlet which he took to be the pass, he rode on again under over hanging walls One side was dark in shade, the other light in sun This narrow passageway turned and twisted and opened into a valley that ae, richer than upon the higher levels The valley was , several wide, and inclosed by unscalable walls But it was the background of this valley that so forcibly struck hi of yellow rocks He could not tell which were close and which were distant Scrawled mounds of stone, like mountain waves, seemed to roll up to steep bare slopes and towers