"Clever chaps, by George!" the sergeant remarked. "They've got brains among them."
"How's that?" queried one of the police.
"They've tried the old duffers' dodge of blanketing the horses' hoofs. Sort of thing that works, too, unless a man happens to have his eyes well open. Luckily I've stumbled up against this sort of thing before."
The other man, who had his own ideas about the matter, nodded his head, but otherwise made no comment.
About ten o'clock the troopers debouched from the trees into a low-lying stretch of land. One could not call it a gully; it was more of a depression, a fault in the earth due to some local subsidence. On the nearest ridge a prospector's hut was perched, from the chimney of which a wisp of smoke ascended. When one of the mounted men dropped from the saddle and opened the door he found no one in charge, though a dinner was merrily simmering away on the fire.
"Whoever he is he can't be far away," the sergeant commented. "He wouldn't leave his dinner unless he was handy. Have a look for him, boys. He might be able to tell us something."
The men scattered in different directions down the depression, and presently a shout from one of them announced that the prospector had been found. He came toiling slowly up the slope, side by side with his discoverer. He was a small wiry man, with a heavy iron-grey beard, and his age, as well as one could guess, was something near to sixty.
"You don't happen to have seen a body of men, horsemen, passing this way late last night or early this morning?" the sergeant queried.
"Nobody passed this way last night," the man answered in a colorless voice. "Why?"
"A gold escort was robbed yesterday evening," the sergeant said, "and we've got information that the robbers came this way."