Beyond the Law

by Jackson Gregory

And now came the slowest, the hardest of his work. To follow the trail left by two horses was comparatively simple. To track a man over these mountains, across hard ground and dry gully, was another matter.

It was certain that the man Dalton, or a possible other, had not gone back over the same trail. It was devious, turning aside for steep cañons which a horse could not climb but which a man could, full of many twists and turns. A man on foot would take a shorter way. And until he knew beyond a doubt that that man had been Virginia Dalton’s father, he could not tell whether to look upon the eastern edge of the tiny valley for it, upon the western, northern or southern. But believing more and more that the trail would lead toward the east, he looked where he thought to find it.

And in an hour after finding the horses he picked up the other trail—the tracks made by the man who had brought them here. He saw the deep print of a boot-heel in the moist soil along the creek, found another track a few feet farther on, then another—all leading toward the east—toward Devil’s Pocket.

A glance at the encircling hills showed him where the tracks must lead, where there was a little nature-made pass, leading over their crests which a man might follow; and he pushed ahead in that direction, positive that he would find the tracks there if there were any loose soil to keep them. He saw readily that he must leave the horses where they were for the present.

It took him another hour to climb up to the gap in the hills. The darkness was coming on, but there was light enough for him to see that the same heavy boots which had left their imprint in the soft dirt by the creek had passed here. He had done a long day’s work; his side was paining him again, the night was very near. So he built his fire here and made his bed of fir-boughs.

In the first light of the dawn he breakfasted and moved on once more toward Devil’s Pocket. Everywhere underfoot was a thick mat of pine-needles, upon which a man’s foot would leave no sign. But the natural pass in which he had camped led straight on and into a cañon upon the other side of the little ridge; and where the soil had sifted down from the cañon sides to lie here and there among the rocks strewing the bottom of the ravine was the imprint of the heavy boots again. Only infrequently stopping to assure himself that he was not going wrong, he made what haste he could back toward the lake. And he had gone perhaps five miles before he came upon a discovery which caused him to stop, frowning, wondering.

He was in a small clearing, sandy-floored. The tracks were here, still leading east. But no longer was there the single trail. Here, plainly outlined, were the prints left by two men. They were side by side, alike fresh, a very few days old.

Farley had just come down a long rocky slope into the clearing, and did not know where the second man’s path had met the first. There was little use in going back, in trying to find out. He sat down, filled his pipe and tried to make out the meaning of this new complication. Who was this second man? Where had he come from? Where was he going? Had he been with Dalton, or had he been trailing Dalton, or had Dalton been following him?

In the end he could not see that the new tracks made any great difference. If the trail he was following led on to the lake, to Dalton’s cabin, the thing was clear enough.

Down the long slope of the mountainside from the clearing, into the rocky bed of the ravine, the only logical way for a man to follow, and out into a miniature valley below, he continued without looking for the tracks which he knew the hard, broken ground would not show had he looked.