THE MAGIC ARROW 167

this time to release one of the vast overhanging drifts
above and send it crashing down the mountainside?
At any moment they might choose to ride, thundering
and shrieking, down the steep slope into the valley
below. This was the season of warm winds and melt-
ing snow-fields, when the mountain spirits loved to
play in all the canyons and gulches, riding the ava-
lanches down into the forests, carrying trees and
rocks and all growing things before them as they
rode. He had heard them ride thus many times; had
seen the wide brown scars on the mountainside left to
mark the scenes of their merrymaking. If they came
sliding down now from the drifts above, he would be
pushed off the cliff into the abyss below.

He peered over the ledge to see if it would be pos-
sible to climb down again, and was amazed when he
saw that the gulch he had left the night before,
marked by a thin spiral of smoke from his fire, was
halfway down the mountain—so far down that the
big cedars looked like little saplings! He had climbed
as far as that, up a cliff so steep and sheer that he
knew he could never make his way downward to the
bottom of it. He must find some other way back to
the valley.

On one side of the cliff was a rock slide, too dan-
gerous to attempt to cross. On the other was a gentler
slope along which he could see the well-worn trails
of mountain-goats. He hurried in that direction and
had gone but a short distance when he came to a