He stopped for a moment at the top of the cliffs and turned to look back at the cabin. He saw the girl standing there alone, her eyes following him; saw her hand go up swiftly as he turned to wave to her; remembered what she had done for him; saw again the clean heart and budding woman’s soul which she had not thought of hiding, had not known how to hide from him. Lifting his hat to her, he hurried down the cliffs and out of sight.
“It would kill her,” he muttered. And then, his eyes grown suddenly hard as he tried to shut her out of his mind: “Never mind, Johnny, old pardner. It’s all in the cards, and we’ll play it out. If he did it, he’ll pay for it!”
But when night came to him in the edge of the mountains and he sat brooding over his camp-fire he could not drive her out of his wandering thoughts. He saw justice on one hand, and loyalty to one’s partner; and on the other he saw the face of a girl who was going to be happy, or broken upon her first great sorrow—and it would be his act to decide her life for her. He bowed his head in his two hands, caught powerless in the irony of fate.
For a week Dick Farley sought, almost without rest to body and brain, to work out the puzzle which had been set before him. He had gone almost back to where he had buried Johnny Watson before he found the trail of the two stolen horses. This he had followed away from the valley through narrow cañons, over rocky passes, for two days.
As he had known from his partner’s words, there was little water here. He thought more than once that he would be driven back to replenish the bottle he had carried with him. But the man who had driven the horses here had known the country; and following the trail, turning with it north or south of its general course, Farley found enough water in small springs and slender streams to keep the life in him and make his progress possible.
Fortunately the country was filled with small game, the quail, hare, grouse and squirrels having more curiosity than fear, coming close enough for him to kill with his revolvers what he required for food.
He came at last upon the two horses in a small, steep-walled valley set like a cup in the mountains. Here there was much rich, dry grass, and a narrow stream wandering through it. With little trouble he found the pack-saddle where it had been thrown into a clump of manzanitas. Remembering for the first time the map which Johnny had told him was hidden in a saddle-blanket, he found it readily. With a swift, cursory glance at it he put it into his pocket.
“To get the horses where they were left in the main trail,” he muttered to himself, “to bring them here, then to go back to the lake would take a man just about five days—the time that Dalton was gone.”
It was another point, a further link in the chain; but, like the other links, it was not strong enough to bear the burden of certainty. He must find other tracks—the tracks the man had made when he left the horses here. He must follow them. If they led straight back over the hills to the lake, he would know. And he had little doubt that he would find them, and that they would carry him once more to the Dalton cabin.