it was done the place showed no
sign of the intruder, only the whispering of the streamlet told that
its course was changed and it was feeling for a new channel.

Then he crept softly out to the plain's edge where the sunlight lay
long and bright. It touched his face and showed it white, with lips
close set and eyes gleaming like crystals. He skirted the rock, making
a soft, quick way to where the camp lay. Here the animals stood, heads
drooped as they cropped the herbage round the spring. Daddy John sat
in the shade of the wagon, tranquilly cleaning a gun. The mountain
man's passage was so soundless that he did not hear it. The animals
raised slow eyes to the moving figure, then dropped them indifferently.
He passed them, his step growing lighter, changing as he withdrew from
the old man's line of vision, to a long, rapid glide. His blood-shot
eyes nursed the extending buttresses, and as he came round them, with
craned neck and body reaching forward, they sent a glance into each
recess that leaped round it like a flame.

Susan had remained in the same place. She made no note of the passage
of time, but the sky between the walls was growing deeper in color, the
shadows lengthening along the ground. She was lying on her side
looking out through the rift's opening when Courant stood there. He
made an instant's pause, a moment when his breath caught deep, and,
seeing him, she started to her knees with a blanching face. As he came
upon her she held out her hands, crying in uprising notes of terror,
"No! No! No!" But he gathered her in his arms, stilled her cries
with his kisses, and bending low carried her back into the darkened
cavern over which the rocks closed like hands uplifted in prayer.

CHAPTER VI

Till the afternoon of the next day they held the train for David. When
evening fell and he did not come Daddy John climbed the plateau and
kindled a beacon fire that threw its flames against the stars. Then he
took his rifle and skirted the rock's looming bulk, shattering the
stillness with reports that let loose a shivering flight of echoes.
All night they sat by the fire listening and waiting. As the hours
passed their alarm grew and their speculations became gloomier and more
sinister. Courant was the only one who had a plausible theory. The
moving sparks on the mountains showed that the Indians were still
following them and it was his opinion that David had strayed afar and
been caught by