lapse into which he feared the girl was falling.

"Now then," he added, when the rope was well in hand, "we've wasted all
the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance. Come
along."

CHAPTER IV

CONGENIAL COMPANY

He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern
towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes
were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail. For
herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling
sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured--really safe
again and whole--after that terrible plunge. But this from the
horseman was impossible. He had not even thanked her for the rescue.

"You horrid, handsome wretch!" she murmured vexedly, stimulated to
renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow
way.

They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the
horses. The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring:

"What for dit you did it--go down there?"

"Just for ducks," said Van. He halted for Beth's approach, put her up
on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a
promptness that was certainly amazing.

There was no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole
affair was inexplicable--his attitude towards Searle at the station,
his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of
them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.

Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom,
for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn. His escape from death
had been so slender--and he would not even rest!

The flat was, in reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of
the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far
below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits,
in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.

After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came
abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down,
lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a
lake.

Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray
floor with the keenest attention. He went on further, and halted
again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.

At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of
immensity,