Thus began the second lap of their journey; thus they, fleeing, followed like shadows upon the traces of one who fled. For Mexicali Joe would obviously keep to the bed of the cañon; if he forsook it in order to climb up either slope to a ridge above, he must of necessity pass through the more sparsely timbered spaces, where he would run constantly into danger of being seen. The only danger to their plans lay with the possibility that he might overhear sounds of their following and might draw a little to one side and hide in some dense copse, and so let them go by. But they had the advantage from the beginning; they knew he was ahead, and he did not know that they followed; so long as they, listening always, did not hear him ahead, there was little danger of him hearing them coming after him. With all the noise of the water, tumbling over falls and splashing along over rocks, singing cheerily to itself at every step, there was small likelihood of any one of the three cautious footfalls being heard....
There were the times, so intent were they following the Mexican, when they forgot what was after all the main issue; forgot that they, too, were followed. For the newer phase of the game was more zestful just now than the other; they had neither glimpsed nor heard anything since the passing of the two riders last night to hint that any danger of discovery threatened them. They spoke seldom, only now and then, pausing briefly, in lowered voices, as the speculations which had been occupying both minds, demanded expression. Thus they were always confronted by some new problem; at first, and for a mile or more, they had full confidence that they had Joe straight ahead of them. But presently they approached a fork of the cañon; it became imperative to know if Joe had gone up the right or the left ravine. And here, where most they wanted a glimpse of him, they had scant hope of seeing him, so dense was the timber growth; he would keep close to the bed of the stream, at times walking in the water so that the network of branches from the brushy tangle on both banks would make for him a dim alleyway, like a tunnel. They could not hope to hear him; they could not count on finding his tracks, since none would be left upon the rocks and the rushing water held none.
But they were alert, ears critical of the slightest rustling, eyes never keener. And, their good fortune holding firm, when they came to the forking of the ways, that which they had not hoped for, a track upon a hard rock, set them right. For here Joe, but a few score yards ahead of them, had slipped, and had crawled up over a boulder, and there was still the wet trace of his passing, a sign to vanish, drying, while they looked on it. Joe had gone on into the deeper cañon, headed in the direction which last night they had elected for their own, driving on toward the heart of the wilderness country.
They were no less relieved at finding what was the man's likely general direction than at making sure that they were still almost at his heels. For they had come to realize that, to explain Joe's presence here, there were two directly opposing possibilities to consider: It was imaginable that Joe would be making straight for his gold; and it was just as reasonable that his craft might have suggested to him to head in an opposite direction. Now that they might follow him and still be going direct upon their own business, they were for the moment content upon all points.
Deveril, for the most part, went ahead; now and then he paused a moment for the girl to come up with him. But never did he have to wait long. He began to wonder at her; they had covered many hard miles last night; more hard miles this morning. How long, he asked himself, as his eyes sought to read hers, could such a slender, altogether feminine, blush-pink girl stand up under such relentless hardship as this flight promised to give them? And always he went on again, reassured and admiring; her eyes remained clear, her regard straight and cool. A girl unafraid; the true daughter of dauntless, hot-blooded parents.
And she, watching his tall, always graceful form leading the way, found ample time to wonder about him. She had seen him last night burst in through a window and take the time coolly, though already the hue and cry was breaking at his contemptuous heels, to rifle a man's pockets. There was an indelible picture: the debonair Babe Deveril, who had stepped unquestioningly into her fight, going down on his knees before his fallen kinsman ... calmly bent upon robbery. For she had seen the bank-notes in his hand.
The sun rose high and crested all the ridges with glorious light, and poured its golden warmth down into the steep cañons. But, now that shadows began to shrink and the little open spaces lay revealed in detail, fresh labor was added in that they were steadily harder driven to keep to cover; all day long, at intervals, they were to have glimpses of the Buck Valley road, high above upon the mountain flank, and at each view of the road they understood that a man up there might have caught a glimpse of them. Ten o'clock came and found them doggedly following along the way which they held the viewless Mexicali Joe must have taken before them. They paused and stooped to the invitation of the creek, and thereafter ate what was left them of their grilled trout. Having eaten, they drank again; and having drunk, they again took up the trail....
"If you can stand the pace?" queried Deveril over his shoulder. And she read in the gleam in his eyes that he was set on seeing this thing through; on sticking close to Mexicali Joe until he came, with Joe, upon his secret.
"Why, of course!" she told him lightly, though already her body ached.
It was not over an hour later when they set their feet in a trail which they were confident Mexicali Joe had followed; from the moment they stepped into the trail they watched for some trace of him, but the hard, rain-washed, rocky way which only a mountaineer could have recognized as a trail, was such as to hold scant sign, if the one who travelled it but exercised precaution. Babe Deveril, with his small knowledge of these mountains, held it the old short-cut trail from Timkin's Bar, long disused, since Timkin's Bar itself had a score of years ago died the death of short-lived mining towns. Brush grew over it, and again and again it vanished underfoot, and they were hard beset to grope forward to it again. Yet trail of a sort it was, and it set them to meditating: Timkin's Bar, in the late '80's, had created a gold furor, and then, after its short and hectic life, had been abandoned, as an orange, sucked dry by a child, is thrown aside. Was it possible that among the old diggings Mexicali Joe had stumbled upon a vein which the old-timers had overlooked?