Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/96

82 this, which has got garnets and olivines in spots sown thick as grain on a farm, is bound to hev' diamonds? I'll say so, and I'll find 'em 'fore I die."

He was a monomaniac on the subject and they humoured him. So long as he was looking for diamonds he was not so likely to nose into their private affairs. And he stated very frankly that he had seen no garnets along the Tonto Fork.

The next day, in the clear atmosphere, the indescribable grandeur of the edge of the Mogollon Mesa began to show in all its rugged and raw detail of sudden and fearful cliffs, white and glaring red and brilliant yellow, purple, and black rimrock and, beyond, the three snowy crests of the San Francisco Peaks, almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level. It ran east and west, half of it forming the northern line to the reservation. To their left the Mazatzal Range tapered away north and west toward the gap where the fertile Verde River unrolled its emerald ribbon oasis.

They had left the flats behind them and had entered a land of roughly tabled masses of limestone with wild gorges winding between, pressing on to the fork of the Tonto. One branch of that daring stream they had already passed, rapidly sinking and narrowing as it endeavoured to pierce the desert, but this was known as the South Fork, Harvey explained.

Gradually they mounted from the floor of the Basin and emerged upon a wide tableland, naked of all verdure, floored with chalcedony, on which the sun beat with fearful emphasis. This, said Harvey,