Sautee ran to his office and got out his small car. He stopped at the Red Feather and took one of the men from the mine with him. He stopped 150 again when he reached the Carlisle cabin, pounded on the doors, and looked in the windows. But the place was deserted, and Sautee’s features were wreathed in perplexity as he went back to his car.
“That’s queer,” he said as he climbed into his seat.
“What’s that?” asked the man beside him.
But Sautee’s answer was drowned in the roar of the motor as he sped up the road toward the hogback and the mine.
CHAPTER XXI
A CAPTURE
When Rathburn rode away from Sautee’s quarters he galloped up the street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted. Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent toward the Dixie Queen.
He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this occasion one would not have noted an attitude of uncertainty about his manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man’s description of this trail, and he had determined general directions the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the desert in the east.