Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/262

 and tied his "slicker" an the back of Nan's saddle.

"We'll not be able to go much beyond the box cañon, I fancy." Bob looked anxiously at the lowering clouds. He still watched them as they alternately galloped and walked over the good and bad stretches in the road which lay between them and the great crack in the low, spreading mountain which some convulsion of nature had rent asunder.

For a distance of three-quarters of a mile the road led through this gash in the mountain, the walls of which rose in places nearly sheer for three hundred feet. The same mountain-stream which furnished Hopedale with water flowed through the bottom of the cañon, and the wagon-road was the bed of the shallow creek.

"They are sure wicked-lookin' clouds back there." Ben glanced casually over his shoulder.

"See how they sag!" Nan commented. "They look like big, dark-blue army blankets filled with water."

Bob was uneasy; he felt that they should return, but hesitated to suggest it because of