Yaqui led swiftly along the lake to the upper end, where the
stream roared down over unscalable walls. This point was the
farthest Gale had ever penetrated into the rough foothills, and
he had Belding's word for it that no white man had ever climbed
No Name Mountains from the west.
But a white man was not an Indian. The former might have
stolen the range and valley and mountain, even the desert,
but his possessions would ever remain mysteries. Gale had
scarcely faced the great gray ponderous wall of cliff before
the old strange interest in the Yaqui seized him again. It recalled
the tie that existed between them, a tie almost as close as blood.
Then he was eager and curious to see how the Indian would conquer
those seemingly insurmountable steps of stone.
Yaqui left the gulch and clambered up over a jumble of weathered
slides and traced a slow course along the base of the giant wall.
He looked up and seemed to select a point for ascent. It was the
last place in that mountainside where Gale would have thought
climbing possible. Before him the wall rose, leaning over him,
shutting out the light, a dark mighty mountain mass. Innumerable
cracks and crevices and caves roughened the bulging sides of dark
rock.
Yaqui tied one end of his lasso to the short, stout stick and,
carefully disentangling the coils, he whirled the stick round and
round and threw it almost over the first rim of the shelf, perhaps
thirty feet up. The stick did not lodge.
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