A movement toward the waiting vehicles followed, and at the facing about
Elsa observed that her father hastily flung the rifle into the mine
tunnel-mouth; and had a fleeting glimpse of Ballard and Bromley walking
slowly arm-in-arm toward the mesa shore along the broad coping of the
abutment.

At the buckboards Wingfield stood her friend again. "Send Jerry
Blacklock down to see how serious it is," he suggested, coming between
her and the others; and while she was doing it, he held the group for a
final look down the canyon at the raging flood still churning and
leaping at its barriers like some sentient wild thing trapped and
maddened with the first fury of restraint.

Young Blacklock made a sprinter's record on his errand and was back
almost immediately. Mr. Ballard had got his arm pinched in some way at
the gate-head, he reported: it was nothing serious, and the Kentuckian
sent word that he was sorry that the feeding of the multitude kept him
from saying so to Miss Elsa in person. Elsa did not dare to look at
Wingfield while Blacklock was delivering his message; and in the
buckboard-seating for the return to Castle 'Cadia, she contrived to have
Bigelow for her companion.

It was only a few minutes after Jerry Blacklock had raced away up the
canyon path with his message of reassurance that Bromley, following
Ballard into the office room of the adobe bungalow and locking the door,
set to work deftly to dress and bandage a deep bullet-crease across the
muscles of his chief's arm; a wound painful enough, but not disabling.

"Well, what do you think now, Breckenridge?" he asked, in the midst of
the small surgical service.

"I haven't any more thinks coming to me," was the sober reply. "And it
is not specially comforting to have the old ones confirmed. You are sure
it was the colonel who fired at me?"

"I saw the whole thing; all but the actual trigger-pulling, you might
say. When Mr. Pelham cut him off, he turned and stepped back into the
mouth of the mine. Then, while they were all standing up to see you
lower the gate, I heard the shot and saw him come out with the gun in
his hands. I was cool enough that far along to take in all the little
details: the gun was a short-barrelled Winchester--the holster-rifle of
the cow-punchers."

"_Ouch!_" said Ballard, wincing under the bandaging. Then: "The
mysteries have returned, Loudon; we were on the wrong track--all of us.
Wingfield and you and I had figured out that the