o, he was sure that he had-not dreamed it. A horse had called
insistently. Andy knew horses too well not to know that there was
anxiety and rebellion in that call.

He waited a minute, his heart beating heavily. He turned and
started back down the gulch, and then stopped suddenly. He heard it
again--shrill, prolonged, a call from somewhere; where, he could not
determine because of the piled masses of earth and rock that flung the
sound riotously here and there and confused him as to direction.

Then his own horse turned his head and looked toward the left, and
answered the call. From far off the strange horse made shrill reply.
Andy got down and began climbing the left-hand ridge on the run, tired
as he was. Not many horses ranged down in here--and he did not believe,
anyway, that this was any range horse. It did not sound like Silver,
but it might be the pigeon-toed horse of Miss Allen. And if it was, then
Miss Allen would be there. He took a deep breath and went up the last
steep pitch in a spurt of speed that surprised himself.

At the top he stood panting and searched the canyon below him. Just
across the canyon was the high peak which Miss Allen had climbed afoot.
But down below him he saw her horse circling about in a trampled place
under a young cottonwood.

You would never accuse Andy Green of being weak, or of having unsteady
nerves, I hope.

But it is the truth that he felt his knees give way while he looked;
and it was a minute or two before he had any voice with which to call to
her. Then he shouted, and the great hill opposite flung back the echoes
maddeningly.

He started running down the ridge, and brought up in the canyon's bottom
near the horse. It was growing shadowy now to the top of the lower
ridges, although the sun shone faintly on the crest of the peak. The
horse whinnied and circled restively when Andy came near. Andy needed no
more than a glance to tell him that the horse had stood tied there for
twenty-four hours, at the very least. That meant....

Andy turned pale. He shouted, and the canyon mocked him with echoes. He
looked for her tracks. At the base of the peak he saw the print of her
riding boots; farther along, up the slope he saw the track again. Miss
Allen, then, must have climbed the peak, and he knew why she had done
so. But why had she not come down again?

There was only one way to find out, and he took the method in the
face of his weariness. He climbed the peak also, with