Then
he waded out on another beach.
He found himself in a pocket of the cliffs, where the precipice so far
drew back as to leave a clear space of four or five acres in the river
bottom. Such pockets, or "coves," are by no means unusual in the
inaccessible depths of the great box canons of the Sierras. Often the
traveller can look down on them from above, lying like green gems in
their settings of granite, but rarely can he descend to examine them.
Thankfully Bob darted to one side. Here for a moment he might be safe,
for surely no one not driven by such desperation as his own would dream
of setting foot in the river.
A loud snort almost at his elbow, and a rush of scurrying shapes,
startled him almost into crying aloud. Then out into the moonlight from
the shadow of the cliffs rushed two horses. And Bob, seeing what they
were, sprang from his fancied security into instant action, for in a
flash he saw the significance of the broken horseshoe on the beach, the
sunken ledge, and the secret of the horses' pasture. By sheer chance he
had blundered on one of Saleratus Bill's outlaw retreats.
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