"He means the creek," explained Belle. "It's way down there ahead of us."
Strain her eyes as she would, Kate could see only the blackness of the darkness ahead.
"'N' b' jing!" muttered Bradley, as Kate peered into nothingness, "she's whinin' t'night f'r fair."
Again for an instant Kate did not comprehend. Then the leads were swung sharply by Bradley to the left. The stage rounded what Kate afterward frequently recognized as an overhanging shoulder of rock on the road down to the creek, and a vague, dull roar swept up from below.
Bradley halted the horses, climbed down, and taking the lantern went forward on foot to investigate.
"Must have been a cloudburst in the mountains," remarked Belle, listening; and Kate was to learn that a cloudless sky gives no assurance whatever for the passage of a mountain stream.
The lantern disappeared, to come into sight again farther down the trail, and while both women talked, the faint light swung at intervals in and out of their vision as Bradley reconnoitered. Kate was a little worried, but her companion sat quite unmoved, even when Bradley returned and reported the creek "roarin'."
"That bein' the case," he muttered, "I'm thinkin' the Double-draw bridge has took up its timbers and walked likewise."
The Double-draw bridge! How well Kate was to know that name; but that night it seemed, like everything else, only very queer.
"Bradley," protested Belle, now very much disturbed, "that can't be."