“I do not believe Emma Dean could resist these flowers,” murmured Grace.
In order to observe both banks, Grace stepped into the stream that flowed from the larger of the canyons, and waded along it, regardless of the fact that the icy-cold water instantly took all feeling from her feet, her whole attention being centered on the flower-bordered banks of the stream. Grace was peering at the wild flowers, looking for plucked stems.
The Overton girl suddenly uttered an exclamation and sank down on her knees at the edge of the creek.
“Ah! Plucked flowers. Some one has picked them within a few hours, for the stems are still bleeding.”
Grace began examining the ground with infinite care, but though she found flowers that had been crushed down, she failed to find a single distinct footprint. Further up the stream, however, she came upon that for which she had been searching—the imprint of a human foot, a small, slender foot.
Reasonably certain that she had at last come upon the trail of her missing companion, Grace sprang up and ran as rapidly as the rough going would permit, plunging deeper and deeper into the canyon that was now dimmed with the gloom of the approaching mountain night.
The Overton girl’s first impression was that she should fire her rifle, but believing that Emma could not be far away, unless she had wandered into still another canyon and become wholly lost in the maze, Grace decided first to search a little further. At several such canyon intersections Grace herself became confused, but careful examination of a few yards of her own trail to the rear soon set her straight.
From time to time she would pause and raise her voice in a long-drawn call that must have reached far up the canyon and up the mountainside as well.
“I shall have to signal for assistance,” finally decided Grace, the gloom now having become so deep that she was no longer able to distinguish the tell-tale marks left by Emma Dean’s shoes.
“When Hippy and the girls come, we will build fires, and, with torches, follow the trail until we find her.”