austed, faithful and
patient, but as if every weary, splashing, slipping step would be their
last.

All this Venters noted in one glance. After that he watched with a
thrilling eagerness. Straight at the waterfall the rustlers drove the
burros, and straight through the middle, where the water spread into a
fleecy, thin film like dissolving smoke. Following closely, the rustlers
rode into this white mist, showing in bold black relief for an instant,
and then they vanished.

Venters drew a full breath that rushed out in brief and sudden
utterance.

"Good Heaven! Of all the holes for a rustler!... There's a cavern under
that waterfall, and a passageway leading out to a canyon beyond. Oldring
hides in there. He needs only to guard a trail leading down from
the sage-flat above. Little danger of this outlet to the pass being
discovered. I stumbled on it by luck, after I had given up. And now I
know the truth of what puzzled me most--why that cattle trail was wet!"

He wheeled and ran down the slope, and out to the level of the
sage-brush. Returning, he had no time to spare, only now and then,
between dashes, a moment when he stopped to cast sharp eyes ahead. The
abundant grass left no trace of his trail. Short work he made of the
distance to the circle of canyons. He doubted that he would ever see it
again; he knew he never wanted to; yet he looked at the red corners
and towers with the eyes of a rider picturing landmarks never to be
forgotten.

Here he spent a panting moment in a slow-circling gaze of the sage-oval
and the gaps between the bluffs. Nothing stirred except the gentle wave
of the tips of the brush. Then he pressed on past the mouths of several
canyons and over ground new to him, now close under the eastern wall.
This latter part proved to be easy traveling, well screened from
possible observation from the north and west, and he soon covered it
and felt safer in the deepening shade of his own canyon. Then the huge,
notched bulge of red rim loomed over him, a mark by which he knew again
the deep cove where his camp lay hidden. As he penetrated the thicket,
safe again for the present, his thoughts reverted to the girl he had
left there. The afternoon had far advanced. How would he find her? He
ran into camp, frightening the dogs.

The girl lay with wide-open, dark eyes, and they dilated when he knelt
beside her. The flush of fever shone in her cheeks. He lifted her and
held water to her dry lips, and felt a