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Toward sunset of the following day Ben and Nevada, with Modoc behind driving the pack animals, were approaching the wild region known as the lava beds. Miles of sage flat led to the forest of pine that rose in undulating steps to the bare gray cinder slope and black lava ridge and dome of the mountain. In the foreground the pine trees showed faintly yellow, gradually losing that hue for a healthy green.

At the edge of the forest Ben called a halt to make dry camp. One out of every three pine trees appeared to be dying. The pine–needle foliage was sear and yellow. Six years of drought had doomed many of these noble trees. The forest was extremely dry and almost suffocatingly odorous.

During the day the men had crossed the track of the band of wild horses; and while busy with the camp duties, and after supper round the fire, their sole topic of conversation related to the chase. Next morning they were on their way before sunrise, slowly climbing and working somewhat to the west.

When the sun rose to blaze into the open forest Ben thought he had never seen so beautiful, so dry, and so dead a place. Not a sound, not a living creature! The trees were yellow pines, large, stately, and widely separated. A thin bleached white grass stood above the strange volcanic soil. It was no less than gray granulated pumice stone, soft and springy, so light that clouds of white dust puffed up from every step of horse. The travel was therefore slow and tedious. Under the pines, where a mat of brown needles covered this treacherous ground, the travel was easier. On all sides there was a rain of dead pine needles falling from the starved trees, sifting, floating, glinting down in a weird silence.

Modoc, who took the lead, kept to the base of the gray slope, now working westward. Through openings in the forest a red cinder mountain stood up against the blue sky. It had a fringe of pines. The fine dust that puffed up from under the hoofs of the horses was hard on both man and beast. It clogged the nostrils. It choked. It had a smarting, constricting power, like that of alkali.

As the hunters progressed, getting higher all the time, the characteristics peculiar to this lava–bed country appeared to be magnified in every detail. The pine trees grew immense; the gray ridges of pumice sloped up, too steep for a horse to climb without effort; out of this strange medium the pines sprang; and the brown of trunks, the green and red of foliage, against that soft pearly gray background, was strikingly beautiful.

Toward noon Modoc worked down a little, coming to the parklike slope of a great canyon, across which loomed the steep red cinder cone. Here there began to be manifested harsher evidences of the volcanic power that had dominated the region in ages past. Outcroppings of bronze and black lava showed here and there under the pines. These increased in size and number, and presently it was noticeable that a thin layer of pumice covered a tremendous stratum of lava.