The chief nodded his approval of the plan, and Tom and the three miners at once started, taking the pack-horses with them. On the way down they came upon a bear. Ben was about to fire, but Jerry said: "Best leave him alone, Ben; we are only three miles down, and these cliffs would echo the sound and the red-skins would hear it and know that some of us had gone down the valley, and might make a rush at once." In an hour and a half they came down to a spot where the valley, after widening out a good bit, suddenly terminated, and the stream entered a deep cañon in the face of the wall of rock that closed it in.
"I reckon all this part of the valley was a lake once," Jerry said. "When it got pretty well full it began to run over where this cañon is and gradually cut its way out down to the Colorado. I wonder how far it is to the river."
They had gone but a hundred yards down the cañon when they came to a place where a recent fall of rocks blocked it up. Through these the stream, which was but a small one, made its way.
"There is a grist of water comes down here when the snow melts in the spring," Ben remarked. "You can see that the rocks are worn fifty feet up. Waal, I reckon this place is good enough for us, Jerry."
"I reckon so, too," the latter agreed. "It will be a job to get our horses over; but we have got to do it anyhow, if we have to carry them." The animals, however, managed to scramble up the rocks that filled the cañon to the height of some thirty feet. The distance between the rock walls was not more than this in width.
"We could hold this place for a year," Ben said, "if they didn't take to chucking rocks down from above."
"Yes, that is the only danger," Jerry agreed; "but the betting is they could not get nigh enough to the edge to look down. Still, they might do it if the ground is level above; anyhow, we should not show much at this depth, for it is pretty dark down here, and the rocks must be seven or eight hundred feet high."
It was, indeed, but a narrow strip of sky that they saw as they looked up, and although still broad daylight in the valley they had left, it was almost dark at the bottom of the deep gorge, and became pitch dark as soon as the light above faded.