e a man of peculiar moods. If it came over him suddenly
and strongly in an hour of depression he might even go to that desperate
length. He believed the difficulties of the canyon were largely
exaggerated, anyhow. Once he told me that he would undertake to go
through it with nothing more than a pair of moccasins and a lantern. It
was his theory that a man would need the moccasins for clinging to the
rocks."

"It's a queer notion," said Bentley reflectively.

"Do you think----" she began, halting her words again and looking at him
with distended eyes.

"There's no telling what a man might do when desperate and despondent,"
he answered. "But I don't believe he'd go without leaving some word, or
at least making some disposition of his property in writing, in case he
never returned. We'll open his bags and see what we can find."

They hurried forward to carry out this intention.

The doctor's baggage consisted of his battered suitcase and the black
bag which contained his instruments. Neither was locked, but neither
contained any word to explain where he had gone, nor to give support to
the belief that he had intended going anywhere.

Walker, whom Bentley and Agnes rejoined at the camp, sat pondering the
information supplied by the girl concerning the doctor's designs on the
canyon.

"I'll tell you," he declared at length, as if talking to himself, "that
man had the nerve to tackle it!"

Agnes looked at him, her face quickening.

"What do you know about him?" she asked.

"I know," said Walker mysteriously, with no intention of bringing his
own indiscretions up for the censure of June and her severe mother,
"that he had courage enough to tackle anything. I've seen proof of that
right here in Comanche, and I want to tell you people that doctor wasn't
any man's coward."

"Thank you for saying that," blurted Agnes, wholly unintentionally, a
glow of pride on her cheeks.

Mrs. Reed and June looked at her, the widow with a severe opening of her
mouth, out of which no sound came; June with a smile behind her hand.

Walker shook his head.

"He had the courage," said he, "but he had too much sense to try to go
through that canyon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive.
And even if the doctor had wanted to go he wouldn't have started at
night."

"I don't know that it would make much difference," said Agnes. "It's
always night in that terrible canyon."

"And that's so, too," Walker agreed. "I think I'l