He could hear the subdued roar of the water constricted by the soaring cliff walls. Above this canyon lay another, and another after that, more tortured whitewater and cliff walls and fallen boulders. The canyon names were themselves ominous: Hellroaring, Black, and Grand. The river drained out cold and green from country that few visited and no one called home. Places where the earth’s crust was so thin it was like a scab over a molten wound. The air sulfurous, great gouts of steam rising, the very ground pulsing with the Vulcan pressure seething below. Great herds of elk and bison wandered
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