Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/92

78 'fore he could wiggle, I can show you all you want, I reckon."

"How close is Stone Men Cañon to the head-waters of the Tonto Fork?" asked Stone.

"We pass it on the way, toward the end of the trip. I ain't ever bin clear up to the head of the Fork. I ain't hankering after too much excitement these days. Whenever I gets too close to the reservation line my scalp itches and I takes it as a sign the climate ain't healthy. But I can take ye there, if you're sot on it. Leave you there an' come back for you later if ye like."

"If we find our way there we'll manage to get back all right," said Stone. "Now let's get down to price. We want to start in the morning."

At dawn Diamond Dick went with them down into the misnamed Basin of the Tonto, a wilderness of weird, burned-out, ragged mountain spurs, dotted with extinct volcanoes, set with wide rivers of flinty lava flows. Sandy wastes often entirely barren, sometimes covered with greasewood or thorny mesquite, sometimes set with barrel cactus, fifty feet tall, branched like giant candelabra. They trudged painfully across the dry beds of prehistoric lakes in whose alkali no green thing may grow and puddles of rain water turn to deadly poison. They crossed mountain passes by following trails worn a few inches deep in the solid limestone by the pattering pads of hundreds of thousands of generations of coyotes. Mirages mocked them, and the sudden winds formed by the ever swiftly changing layers of