Valley of Vanishing Men

Valley of Vanishing Men by Max Brand is about Ben Trainer, who finds out that his brother is imperiled. Ben leaves his job punching cows to go rescue him from certain death. Excerpt: «IT WAS one of those gorges which seem to have been plowed through the mountains with some vast mechanical instrument that cuts with equal ease through hard and soft. Granite had yielded like butter to the edge of that imagined tool. And Trainor, looking up from the edge of the creek, could see the steep and polished cliffs rising on either hand, beyond the climbing of man or beast. At the top, there was occasional fringing of trees, which leaned over the gorge as though peering curiously down into its depths.»