e rock tops--sink--sink--sink--no larger than a
spool in the purple shadows, till with a plunge it disappeared.

"Whew, it _would_ be going if one went over." The old man mowed the
sweat from his forehead and drew a breath.

On the instant, the hollow chasm of the canyon split to the crash of a
rifle shot that rocketted and quaked and repeated in splintering
echoes; and a bullet pinged at Wayland's feet.

"That's splitting the air for you--Wayland."

"Drop down, Sir," urged the Ranger, pulling the old frontiersman to
shelter of the upper rocks. "They have come out above. They have
heard that cursed stone. That's only a chance shot to learn where we
are. They can't come behind. They have got to go down ahead--"

"And the fat's in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse,"
deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along
the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland
handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt
beneath the leather coat.

"They won't understand this pursuit at all," explained Wayland.
"Sheriff Flood is the guarantee of safety for any criminal in the
country side. They'll think it a citizens' posse. Where this trail
comes down at the end of the precipice is a crag. Will you hide behind
that, sir? I'll go above and head them down. I'm not asking you to
risk your life. They'll not see you till they gallop down."

"But you are risking your own life if you go up?"

"So does the fellow who has slipped on a banana peel," said Wayland.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MAN ON THE JOB

The two men proceeded along the precipice trail of the Pass. The
shouting river below boisterous from the full flood of noon-day thaw
began to hush. By the shadows, the Ranger knew that the afternoon was
waning. The echoes from the shot still rocked in sharp crepitating
knocks as of stone against stone, fainter and fading. Then a quiver of
wind met their faces. The chasm opened to the fore like a gate, or a
notch in the serrated ridge of the sky-line; and the precipice trail
dropped over the edge of the crag to the scooped hollow of a slope
where rock slide or avalanche had plowed a groove in the bevelled
masonry of the precipice.

"This is the place," indicated Wayland.

From the shoulder of the higher slope came a little narrow indurated
trail scarcely a hand's width, marked by the cleft foot-prints of a
mountain goat. Where the p