It was Penelope, wrapped in a bathrobe, coming down the stairs.
Daybreak found the Lone Ranger once more in the saddle. He rode slowly at first, but as the light increased and made the trail he followed more distinct, he increased his speed. With several hours' rest the masked man felt much better. Tonto, he was sure, could handle things at the ranch house until Wallie returned. The Indian's position there would be explained by Penny. Bryant Cavendish had been left in the cave. Now the Lone Ranger rode in pursuit of Yuma.
Wallie with the wagon, and all the horsemen going to the Basin, had passed close to the cave in Bryant's Gap while the masked man and Bryant Cavendish were there. The hoofs of these men's horses had in many cases blotted out the tracks of Yuma, but an occasional mark where the shale was soft assured the masked man that he was still on the trail of the one he sought.
There were times when he had to dismount and examine the ground closely to make sure he hadn't gone astray.
Then he found that Yuma had left the Gap. New scratches on the rocks of one side of it showed where his horse had fought its way up an almost sheer ascent to gain the level land above. The Lone Ranger guided Silver up the same path. Now the ground, covered in most places by a sort of turf, was softened by the recent rains and held distinct hoofprints of the big cowpuncher's horse.
"Come on, Silver," the Lone Ranger called as he saw the trail stretching out toward the horizon. The stallion fairly flew over the ground that felt so soft after the sharp and sliding stones of the Gap.
The marks of Yuma's horse were spaced to show that it too had traveled at top speed. But Yuma had ridden in the darkness, which was probably the reason that his horse had fallen. The Lone Ranger saw the gopher hole into which the horse had stepped, and near by, the body of the horse itself. He dismounted and examined the ground.
Marks clearly showed that Yuma had spilled over the head of the falling horse. The dead horse was a few yards distant. The foreleg, to judge from its position, unquestionably was broken. A bullet through the head had ended the beast's suffering. Yuma had taken the most essential things from his duffle and left the rest. His footprints led on in the same direction he'd been going.
The masked man mounted and rode on. It wasn't long before he saw a pile of rocks. They were huge boulders, tossed into the middle of an open plain, as if left and forgotten by the Builder in some era eons ago when the world was made. The footprints led directly toward these rocks.