" she said thoughtfully, "it
wouldn't surprise me a particle to find that we've been taken, without
our knowing it, most any time. Your horse just now, walking across that
bridge of size, for one thing."

Tish seldom makes a pun, which she herself has said is the lowest form
of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and unworthy of her. I
turned and left her.

At last, well on in the evening, I saw Tish draw up her horse and point
ahead.

"The miscreants!" she said.

True enough, up a narrow side canon we could see a camp-fire. It was a
small one, and only noticeable from one point. But Tish's keen eye had
seen it. She sat on her horse and gazed toward it.

"What a shameful thing it is," she said, "to prostitute the beauties of
this magnificent region to such a purpose. To make of these beetling
crags a joke! To invade these vast gorges with the spirit of
commercialism and to bring a pack of movie actors to desecrate the
virgin silence with ribald jests and laughter! Lizzie, I wish you
wouldn't wheeze!"

"You would wheeze, too, Tish Carberry," I retorted, justly indignant,
"if a horse had just pressed your spinal column into your breast bone.
Goodness knows," I said, "where my lungs are. I've missed them ever
since my fall."

However, she was engrossed with larger matters, and ignored my
petulance. She is a large-natured woman and above pettiness.

We made our way slowly up the canon. The movie outfit was securely
camped under an overhanging rock, as we could now see. At one point
their position commanded the trail, which was hardly more than a track
through the wilderness, and before we reached this point we dismounted
and Tish surveyed the camp through her glasses.

"We'd better wait until dark," Tish said. "Owing to the padding they
have not heard us, but it looks to me as if one of them is on a rock,
watching."

It seemed rather strange to me that they were keeping a lookout, but
Tish only shrugged her shoulders.

"If I know anything of that red-headed Oliver man," she said, "he hates
to let a camera rest. Like as not he's got it set up among the trees
somewhere, taking flashlights of wild animals. It's rather a pity," she
said, turning and surveying Aggie and myself, "that he cannot get you
two. If you happen to see anything edible lying on the ground, you'd
better not pick it up. It's probably attached to the string that sets
off the flash."

We led our horses into the woods, which were ver