Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/151

Rh marked with what suggested guano. Stone guessed it to be the mineral deposits from the overflow of springs. The head of the cañon looked like a modernist scene-painter's ideal of the entrance to an inferno, lacking only steam to complete the illusion. The stream itself ran for a way in a rock-chute of its own carving and its irrigating possibilities had no scope. There was no blade of grass, no leaf, not even cactus. Below, the devastated ravine showed like a raw gash. All about them the burned-out rocks were piled in a confusion of strata that mocked all order and displayed all the colours of the rainbow. The cliffs were rent into splits filled with purple shadow, eroded into ledges, pyramids topped by sandstone caps fantastically carven by the weather. Here and there tilted dykes were thrust up fin-fashion, suggesting staircases, and everywhere crude reds and yellows and greens heightened or faded into pinks and orange, crimson, lavender, and gray, in contrast with the white dazzle of limerock.

The trail was hard to make, harder with Healy, who had to be bolstered and helped by his one good arm, lifted and levered along, while the sun grew higher and hotter and the rocks, which they were forced to clutch in the steep pitches, became scorching to the fingers. The weight of their canteens, their weapons, and their cartridges grew insupportable. Healy's guns they shared between them,

"I move we 'ide the bloomin' rifles, hanyw'y," suggested Larkin. "We can dig 'em up w'en we come back this w'y."