The brook had been forded, and Allen crossed over likewise, and five minutes later reached a bit of rolling land dotted here and there with sage and other brush.
Allen wondered if the trail would lead to Gold Fork, as the little mining town at the foot of the mountains was called.
"If they went that way I will have no trouble in getting help to run them down," he said to himself. "I can get Ike Watson and Mat Prigley, who will go willingly, and there is no better man to take hold of this sort of thing than Ike Watson."
Mile after mile was passed, and the trail remained as plain as before.
"It looks as if they didn't anticipate being followed," was the way Allen figured it, but he soon found out his mistake, when, on coming around a rocky spur of ground, the trail suddenly vanished.
The young ranchman came to a halt in some dismay, and a look of perplexity quickly stole over his face. He looked to the right and the left, and ahead, but all to no purpose. The trail was gone.
"Here's a state of things," he murmured as he continued to gaze around. "Where in the land of goodness has it gone to? They couldn't have taken wings and flown away."
Allen spent all of a quarter of an hour on the rocky spur. Then on a venture he moved forward over the bare rocks, feeling pretty certain that it was the only way they could have gone without leaving tracks behind them.
He calculated that he had traveled nearly ten miles. His mare showed signs of being tired, and he spoke to her more kindly than ever.
"It won't do, Lilly," he said, patting her soft neck affectionately. "We have got to get through somehow or other. You must brace up and when it is all over you can take the best kind of a long resting spell."