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Show FROM MOqUI TO THE COLORADO. 291 The Navajocs will steal, but if you hire one he will guard your property against all the rest, in which respect they are better than any other Indians. As I made ready for early sleep, Espafiol and other lads came down on a visit, and sat about the fire smoking our tobacco and talking as socially with John as if nothing unusual had hap-pened. All day, June 27th, we traveled in a succession of zigzags. Two miles down the valley we found it narrowed to a rugged cafion ; a little farther the canon became a fearful gorge, into which sunlight never penetrated. The stream disappeared but a few rods below the spring, but a scant growth of sickly cottonwoods showed there was still a moist stratum below. At length we came to a rift in the side wall, about a rod wide, into which John led the way; there we en-tered on a steep and dangerous trail, up which we toiled some hun-dreds of feet to a level sandstone mesa. Across this a few miles, and then John, ahead of me, suddenly disappeared, and I hurried up to find him going down another narrow gorge, a mere rift in the rock not twenty- five feet wide. Down this a mile brought us out on a sandy plain ; across this some five miles, and we came to a perpendic-ular cliff at least a thousand feet high. Skirting this westward, a few miles brought us to another gorge, by which we again reached the summit of the mesa, and before noon found a depression in the rock which had been filled by a late rain, and around it enough bunch-grass for a noon halt. There we were overtaken by a Navajo lad of about fifteen years, who had reached Moqui the day after we left, and followed our trail. He had several fine blankets, woven by his mother, and expected to trade them for a horse at the Mormoney casa. We made a " dry camp " for dinner, took an hour's grazing, and were just off when up galloped Espafiol, also with a few blankets. He had concluded, an hour after we left, to go to the settlements ; because, as I suspect, he had noted the size of my provision sacks. We were now four in number, and traveled the rest of the day on a sandstone ridge tending west- north- west. Far as I could see, the country ap-peared to slope from this ridge northward and southward towards the two Coloradoes. About 5 P. M., we reached a regular water hole, to find it dry to the dismay of the Navajoes. After a brief consultation, Espanol informed me they would hurry on down the slope, south- west, and find water on the other side of the next valley ; and that I might follow their tracks, poco- poco- poco, ( moderate walk). They galloped off, and were soon out of sight. I followed, and in an hour had lost their |
