oel Creech rode away toward the rise in the rolling, barren desert.

"An' now we'll go on," said Creech to Lucy.

When he had gotten all in readiness he ordered Lucy to follow closely
in his tracks. He entered a narrow cleft in the low cliffs which wound
in and out, and was thick with sage and cedars. Lucy, riding close to
the cedars, conceived the idea of plucking the little green berries and
dropping them on parts of the trail where their tracks would not show.
Warily she filled the pockets of her jacket.

Creech led the way without looking back, and did not seem to care where
the horses stepped. The time had not yet come, Lucy concluded, when he
was ready to hide his trail. Presently the narrow cleft opened into a
low-walled canyon, full of debris from the rotting cliffs, and this in
turn opened into a main canyon with mounting yellow crags. It appeared
to lead north. Far in the distance above rims and crags rose in a long,
black line like a horizon of dark cloud.

Creech crossed this wide canyon and entered one of the many breaks in
the wall. This one was full of splintered rock and weathered shale--the
hardest kind of travel for both man and beast. Lucy was nothing if not
considerate of a horse, and here she began to help her animal in all
the ways a good rider knows. Much as this taxed her attention, she
remembered to drop some of the cedar berries upon hard ground or rocks.
And she knew she was leaving a trail for Slone's keen eyes.

That day was the swiftest and the most strenuous in all Lucy Bostil's
experience in the open. At sunset, when Creech halted in a niche in a
gorge between lowering cliffs, Lucy fell off her horse and lay still
and spent on the grass.

Creech had a glance of sympathy and admiration for her, but he did not
say anything about the long day's ride. Lucy never in her life before
appreciated rest nor the softness of grass nor the relief at the end of
a ride. She lay still with a throbbing, burning ache in all her body.
Creech, after he had turned the horses loose, brought her a drink of
cold water from the brook she heard somewhere near by.

"How--far--did--we--come?" she whispered.

"By the way round I reckon nigh on to sixty miles," he replied. "But we
ain't half thet far from where we camped last night."

Then he set to work at camp tasks. Lucy shook her head when he brought
her food, but he insisted, and she had to force it down. Creech
appeared rough but kind. After she had bec