The question the pursuers asked themselves was whether the others had strayed unwittingly from the trail, or whether they had turned off to elude their pursuers, whose desperate mood they could not but know. The latter supposition seemed the more likely, since the path was marked so plainly that it could be lost only by unaccountable carelessness.
At the first break in the side of the vast mountain walls Vose Adams again slipped from his mule and spent several minutes in studying the ground.
“They haven’t gone in here,” was his comment, as he remounted.
“Make certain that we are not too far back,” said the captain.
“I have made no mistake,” was the curt reply of the guide. The party had gone less than twenty rods further, when another rent opened on the other side of the cañon, which was about an eighth of a mile wide. It would not do now to slight anything, and Adams headed his mule diagonally across the gorge, the animal walking slowly, while the rider leaned over with his eyes on the ground. Suddenly he exclaimed:
“We’ve hit it this time! Here’s where they went in!”
All four leaped from the back of their animals. Adams pointed out the faint indentations made by the hoofs of two horses. Less accustomed than he to study 235 such evidence, they failed to note that which was plain to him; the hoof prints of one of the animals were smaller than those of the other, since they were made by Cap, the pony belonging to Nellie Dawson. There could no longer be any doubt that the pursuers were warm on the trail of the fugitives.
Such being the fact, the interest of the men naturally centered on the avenue through which the others had made their way.
It was one of those fissures, sometimes seen among enormous piles of rock, that suggest that some terrific convulsion of nature, ages before, has split the mountain in twain from top to bottom. The latter was on a level with the main cañon itself, the chasm at the beginning being ten or twelve yards in width, but, occurring in a depression of the mountain spur, its height was no more than five or six hundred feet, whereas in other localities it would have been nearly ten times as great. The base was strewn with fragments of sandstone, some of the pieces as large as boulders, which had probably been brought down by the torrents that swept through the ravine in spring or when a cloudburst descended upon the upper portion.
Standing at the entrance, it was observed that the gorge trended sharply to the left, so that the view was shut off at a distance of fifty yards. It was noticeable, 236 too, that the path taken by the fugitives sloped upward at so abrupt an angle that it must have sorely tried the horses.