uffly that he _had_ heard a
horse's hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter,
after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes;
moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into
town, and not out.

Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain
clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt
they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was
overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of
riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from
the saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring
he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed
ahead.

The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded
pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen,
not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient.
"He could easily slip us," Scott explained, "by leaving the trail for
a minute while we rode past--if he knows his business--and I guess he
does."

"If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out,
too, within half to three-quarters of an hour," said de Spain. "But
how could he have got out without being heard?"

"Maybe," suggested Scott, "he forded the river."

"Could he do it?"

"It's a man's job," returned Scott, reflecting, "but it could be
done."

"If a man thought it necessary."

"If he knew you by sight," responded Scott unmoved, "he might have
thought it necessary."

Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode
rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was
found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been
found anywhere in town from Morgan's Gap; whoever had taken a chance
in delivering the message had escaped undetected.

Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the
incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference
with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and
with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at
which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed
the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.

"It's one of two things," declared Lefever, whose eyes were
never dulled by late hours. "Either they've sent this to lure you
into the Gap and 'get' you, or else--and that's a great big