terfall were found!

Her hesitation was brief; the horror of what might lurk in the future
was greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Again
she urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself down
just at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the white
sand, wedged between two white stones, the revolver lay plainly
visible. The noonday sun rested upon the deep water here and its
secret was no secret at all. She was glad that she had come back.

Snatching up the dead limb of a shrub lying close at hand, with little
difficulty or waste of time, she dragged the weapon toward her until
she could thrust her arm, elbow deep into the water, and secure it.

She shuddered as when she had first forced her hand to touch it. But
with quick, steady fingers she dried it against her skirt and thrust it
into the only place where she could be sure of safety, where its voice
would be silenced to all except her own heart, deep into the bosom of
her waist. And again she was on Gypsy's back, again fleeing along the
up-trail.

As she rode, as the rush of air whipped in her face and the leaping
body of the mare under her gave her muscles something to do, the blood
flamed again into her cheeks; courage rushed back into a heart that was
naturally unafraid.

"I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herself
accusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and I
know, oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thing
like that, he couldn't!"

She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racing
straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times
bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail
headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of
pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than
Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of
saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes
and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them.
Off to her left, at the upper end of the valley where were a number of
grazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of a
couple of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn to
them.

Gypsy, warming to the race, carried her mistress valiantly the half a
dozen miles from the ridge she had crossed to the knoll crowned with
great boled,