he brakes, when Belle broke a long
silence: "Where are we, Bill?" she demanded, familiarly.

"The Crazy Woman," Bradley answered briefly. Kate did not understand,
but by this time she had learned in such circumstances to hold her
tongue.

"He means the creek," explained Belle. "It's way down there ahead of
us."

Strain her eyes as she would, Kate could see only the blackness of the
darkness ahead.

"'N' b' jing!" muttered Bradley, as Kate peered into nothingness,
"she's whinin' t'night f'r fair."

Again for an instant Kate did not comprehend. Then the leads were
swung sharply by Bradley to the left. The stage rounded what Kate
afterward frequently recognized as an overhanging shoulder of rock on
the road down to the creek, and a vague, dull roar swept up from below.

Bradley halted the horses, climbed down, and taking the lantern went
forward on foot to investigate.

"Must have been a cloudburst in the mountains," remarked Belle,
listening; and Kate was to learn that a cloudless sky gives no
assurance whatever for the passage of a mountain stream.

The lantern disappeared, to come into sight again farther down the
trail, and while both women talked, the faint light swung at intervals
in and out of their vision as Bradley reconnoitered. Kate was a little
worried, but her companion sat quite unmoved, even when Bradley
returned and reported the creek "roarin'."

"That bein' the case," he muttered, "I'm thinkin' the Double-draw
bridge has took up its timbers and walked likewise."

The Double-draw bridge! How well Kate was to know that name; but that
night it seemed, like everything else, only very queer.

"Bradley," protested Belle, now very much disturbed, "that can't be."

"We'll see," retorted Bradley, gathering his reins and releasing his
brake as he spoke to the horses. "I don't guess myself there's much
left o' that bridge." Only the expletive he placed before the last
word revealed his own genuine annoyance and Kate prudently asked no
further questions. Some instinct convinced her she was already a
nuisance on the silent Bradley's hands. The ford--off the main
road--was where he had purposed setting Kate over, as he expressed it,
to the ranch. Double-draw bridge--on the road to the fort and
Reservation--was two miles above.

The horses climbed the long hill again and started on the road for the
bridge.

"If the Double-draw is out," sighed Belle resignedly, "I reckon we're
trapped."

Fo