ing's intimidations of the villages and
the mystery of the Masked Rider, with his alleged evil deeds, and the
fierce resistance offered any trailing riders, and the rustling of
cattle--these things were only the craft of the rustler-chief to conceal
his real life and purpose and work in Deception Pass.

And like a scouting Indian Venters crawled through the sage of the oval
valley, crossed trail after trail on the north side, and at last entered
the canyon out of which headed the cattle trail, and into which he had
watched the rustlers disappear.

If he had used caution before, now he strained every nerve to force
himself to creeping stealth and to sensitiveness of ear. He crawled
along so hidden that he could not use his eyes except to aid himself in
the toilsome progress through the brakes and ruins of cliff-wall. Yet
from time to time, as he rested, he saw the massive red walls growing
higher and wilder, more looming and broken. He made note of the fact
that he was turning and climbing. The sage and thickets of oak and
brakes of alder gave place to pinyon pine growing out of rocky soil.
Suddenly a low, dull murmur assailed his ears. At first he thought it
was thunder, then the slipping of a weathered slope of rock. But it was
incessant, and as he progressed it filled out deeper and from a murmur
changed into a soft roar.

"Falling water," he said. "There's volume to that. I wonder if it's the
stream I lost."

The roar bothered him, for he could hear nothing else. Likewise,
however, no rustlers could hear him. Emboldened by this and sure that
nothing but a bird could see him, he arose from his hands and knees to
hurry on. An opening in the pinyons warned him that he was nearing the
height of slope.

He gained it, and dropped low with a burst of astonishment. Before him
stretched a short canyon with rounded stone floor bare of grass or sage
or tree, and with curved, shelving walls. A broad rippling stream flowed
toward him, and at the back of the canyon waterfall burst from a wide
rent in the cliff, and, bounding down in two green steps, spread into a
long white sheet.

If Venters had not been indubitably certain that he had entered the
right canyon his astonishment would not have been so great. There had
been no breaks in the walls, no side canyons entering this one where the
rustlers' tracks and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore, he
could not be wrong. But here the canyon ended, and presumably th