"But, John," he asked, "could a man
hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a
get-away?"

"Henry might," answered Lefever laconically.

Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o'clock
after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up
the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken
place, they followed de Spain's jump through the broken sash into the
patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he
had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the
south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he
should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy's country,
but there was no gainsaying the trail--occasional flecks of blood
blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led--not as the
trailers hoped they would, in a wide detour across easy-riding
country toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road--but farther
and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man's
land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this
alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the
unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.

Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head
as he leaned over the pony's shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast
of him. "It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind
of riding."

Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first
time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain's
revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to
stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a
long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter
was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and
after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain
was no longer guiding Sassoon's pony; it was wandering at will.

Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read
in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had
come almost completely about and headed again for Music Mountain.
Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran
directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan's Gap and were
practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.

"Here's a go," muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth
fo