Here, about seven feet from the floor, ran a ledge of rock, between two and three feet in width; and, from this ledge upward the wall slanted at an angle of forty-five degrees to a wide shelf or fissure. It was from this fissure that the faint light came.
Pauline groped her way back along the other wall to the front of the cave again. Despairing, she sat down on the chill stone. The events of the last few hours had left her in a state of mental vertigo. The hold-up of the buckboard and her carrying off by the bandits seemed fantastically impossible.
So this was her "escape" from scenes of adventure. This was the "great, safe, quiet West," where she should forget her perils in New York and wait for others to forget them. She thought of her promise to Harry that she would not try to get into any more scrapes. In her former dangers—even when there seemed hope—she had a buoying trust that there was one man who could save her. He had always saved her. In his protecting shelter she had come to feel almost immune from harm. But with Harry three thousand miles away and totally ignorant of her need of him no sense of imagined protection sustained her now. She took it for granted that Mr. Haines had been made a prisoner or killed. She knew the word would reach Mrs. Haines and the latter would invoke all the powers in the State to find her; but she was, sure she would be dead before anyone unearthed this fearful hiding place.
The light at the far end of the cave grew steadily more dim and Pauline judged that the day was waning.
A rustling sound caught her ear. Sounds are animate or inanimate.
This was unmistakably the sound of a living thing.
Pauline trembled a little but she stood up. Was it man or beast that she had for companion in the mysterious cave?
She took a faltering step forward. The sound seemed to come nearer. The cave had gone almost pitch dark, and, suddenly, from the mid-level of the back wall—from the rock ledge—there flashed upon the sight of the imprisoned girl two beady, burning eyes.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT WHITE QUEEN
Hal Haines' best driving team was lathered with foam and the buckboard swung through the gate on two wheels as Bill Cabot drove back to the Double Cross Ranch.