then on to Hill's Corners? All alone?
It's funny."

Twenty miles he had come from Dry Town. He was again riding slowly,
remembering that his horse had carried the great weight of him many long
miles yesterday and today. Now the hills grew steep and shot up high and
rugged against the sky. The trail was harder, steeper, narrower where it
wound along the edges of the many ravines. Again and again the ground
was so flinty that it held no sign to show whether shod horse had passed
over it or not. But he told himself that there was scant likelihood of
her having turned out here; there was but the one trail now. And then,
suddenly when he came down into another little valley through which a
small drying stream wandered, he came upon the tracks he had been so
long following. And he noted, with a little lift to the eyebrows, that
here were the fresh hoof marks of two horses leading on toward the Camp.

"Somebody else has cut in from the side," he pondered. "Lordy, but this
cattle country is sure getting shot all to pieces with folks. Who'd you
suppose this new pilgrim is?"

Once or twice he drew rein, studying the signs of the trail. The tracks
he had picked up at the stream with the print of the tiny boot were the
small marks of a pony. This second horse for which he was seeking to
account was certainly a larger animal, leaving bigger tracks, deeper
sunk. There was little difficulty in distinguishing one from the other.
And there was as little trouble in reading that the larger horse had
followed the pony, for again and again the big, deep track lay over the
other, now and then blotting it out.

A man, with a long solitary ride ahead of him, has much time for
conjecture, idle and otherwise. Here lay the hint of a story; who was
the second rider, what was his business? Whence had he come and whither
was he riding? And did his following the girl mean anything?

Thornton came at last, in the late afternoon, to the last stream he
would ford before reaching Harte's Camp. Another half mile, the passing
over a slight rise, and he would be in sight of the end of his day's
ride. He crossed the stream, and then, looking for the tracks he had
been following, he saw that again the pony was pushing on ahead of him,
that the horseman had turned aside. He jerked his horse back seeking for
the lost tracks. And presently he found them, turning to the south and
leading off into the mountains.

With thoughtful eyes he returned to his trail