“Is it not possible that it was not our friends who were riding the animals?” asked Miss Briggs.
“I reckon so,” returned the rancher absently. “However, there’s only one thing for us to do, and that is to follow the tracks and watch out.”
While he was speaking, Judy had started off on foot. She was gone for some time. Upon her return she announced that she had picked up the trail, and mounting, she directed her companions to fall in behind her. Bindloss rode a little to one side of the mountain girl, and in a few minutes she pointed out the trail to him. He got down to examine it, and said the faint hoof-prints were those of ponies from his corral.
From that time on fairly rapid progress was made, until the trail grew more difficult to follow. There were straggling cedars about them and on beyond a forest of pines that formed a great green canopy. The season had been dry and the long mountain grass under the sun’s rays had burned to a dull brown, but the grass was tough and traveling through it made it necessary for the ponies to lift their feet high, giving a jolting effect to the riders that was extremely trying.
Bindloss suddenly halted.
“I hear shooting!” he exclaimed.
“So do I,” agreed Grace.
The reports sounded far away, but Bindloss and Judy knew that the firing was not so far away as the Overlanders believed.
“Do you know where you are—do you know the mountains here?” asked the rancher.
Judy shook her head and said she had never been so far into the mountain country before, but that she had a general idea of where they were. Suddenly she wheeled her pony and started away towards the scene of the firing, as well as she was able to locate it. The others followed, each with straining ears and tingling nerves. They were soon rewarded by the realization that they were rapidly approaching the gunfire. Bindloss halted them with a gesture, and sat listening. The party was only now at the edge of the pine forest along which they had been skirting, but there were pines to the right and left of them, beautiful, fragrant pines, nodding to the stiff mountain breeze that was blowing. The wind died down, then sprang up again from a different direction.