It was because of this wire that the sheriff rode up a cañon in Lost Springs on a cool October afternoon. The wind played through the live-oaks and scrub-cedar and went whistling upward to be lost among the solemn peaks. Some cattle were watering at a shallow hole. A ground squirrel scurried across his front. From all about came the soft, mournful cooing of wild doves.
All morning he had been climbing. Sometimes he traveled three miles to gain a mile of distance; winding upward to high mesas, skirting them and descending into another cañon nearer the summits toward which Moffatt was heading.
Presently he was confronted by a wall of rock. It was a sheer thirty feet in height and water oozed down its face into a small pool. There seemed no way out and Lafe scanned the cliffs in search of the trail. While he lolled thus in the saddle, there came a shot from above his head and his horse winced. Without hesitation he fell to the ground and scrambled on hands and knees to the shelter of a tree.
"I near got you that time, Johnson," a clear voice called to him.
It came from behind the crags above the pool. Then he thought he heard the ring of a horse's shoe on stone, but he was too cautious to expose himself at once. For fully an hour he waited, listening for evidence of his enemy and occasionally sighting along the barrel of his 30-30. Then, persuaded Moffatt had seized the chance to increase his lead, he remounted and continued the pursuit. A wale along his mount's shoulder was the only injury.
"He's scared, or he could have got me then," said Lafe, examining this with much satisfaction.
In late afternoon he threaded a broad cañon and entered on a stretch of brakes, perhaps six miles in length and one in width. The top of its numberless bald hills overlooked the cañon's sides. The track he followed ran along a narrow plateau. At intervals, chalky cliffs dropped sheer away on his right hand to a depth of two hundred feet, and there were gaping cavities into which a mountain could have been dumped, resembling in their formation the craters of extinct volcanoes. Giant fissures showed in the mounds of salmon-colored clay, and, close beside him, a yawning void threatened, whence a hundred thousand tons of shale had slid. Of vegetation there was none here, save a tangle of prickly-pear at the mouth of a gulch.
"There he goes now," said the sheriff, pricking his horse.
Moffatt was nearly a mile ahead and moving leisurely, as though he had no fear. He topped a rise and waved his hand at Johnson before dipping out of sight.
This confidence was partially explained when the sheriff eased his horse down the declivity that had shut him from view and discovered a break in the trail. At this point it ended at a huge rock, and split. One part ran along the base of the rock and then turned back in the direction he had come. At least it so looked, but he could not see its ultimate destination because of the broken nature of the country. The other path made a slight detour and went on, past the rock.