He followed the trail for a mile, saw how it wound in and out, climbing and dipping, worming slowly toward the pocket. And then, when he had been assured that the two horses were ahead of him, he left the trail and fought his way due east, up the face of a steep bank and to the crest of the bleak mountains. He remembered Watson had told him that following the trail they would have to go a good fifteen miles to travel ten, and now he sought a short-cut to head off the man he followed. He knew that he would pick up the trail again in the valley.
Hour after hour he trudged on, his face whipped by tangled brambles in the cañons, his hands torn by the crags over which he continued to climb toward the top of the ridge.
At last, about the middle of the forenoon, he came to the top of the narrow divide. From an outjutting crag he looked down into the valley before him, seeing again the winding course of the creek, the little lake, the steep mountain walls and gorges. Here he stopped long enough to choose the way he must go to make the best time. And then with one long look back toward the slope where the lone cedar flung its twisted branches over his partner, he turned again eastward and plunged down into the steep cañon, down into the Devil’s Pocket.
CHAPTER IV
FARLEY TAKES A TUMBLE
ON THE floor of the Devil’s Pocket Dick Farley came upon the trail again as he had foreseen. Where it ran from the ridges across the creek he found tracks. He drank first and then studied them. And slowly there came a frown into his eyes, and then a look of pain.
For there were the tracks of one horse, and of a man’s boot-heels in the soft wet soil—tracks a month old, the tracks which Johnny Watson had left when he drew out of the valley to find his partner.
Back and forth Farley moved, stepping slowly by the side of the path, searching long and carefully for the fresh signs to tell him that two horses had passed here during the night or in the early morning. He did not find them. But a moment later, at the very edge of the stream, close to the spot where he had just flung himself down to drink, he found that another man had lain there drinking. He saw the prints of the heavy boots, saw that they had come from the west; that the man had crossed the stream here, stepping over the mere thread of water, and had pushed on toward the northern end of the valley. And the horses?
Dick had no doubt this was the man he sought. For some reason he had left the horses in the hills, hidden in some steep-walled cañon.
Again Farley pushed on, following the trail, seeing now and again the outline of the heavy boots where the soil was moist or dusty. In a little he ceased to look for the tracks, excepting at long intervals, for they led straight ahead, keeping to the path through the wiry grass, straight toward the lake. At noon he stopped to eat and smoke his pipe. And then again he pushed on.
He was tired now, but he gave no respite to the muscles which had been greatly taxed after a night of wakefulness.