"Why, it's two horsemen! I wonder if Jim and Ken can be thinking of visiting us over Sunday,—because Mr. Latimer is coming, you know," exclaimed Eleanor, joyfully surprised.
"They wouldn't be arriving Saturday afternoon, as they wouldn't be able to leave camp until Sunday," added Polly.
Both girls shaded their eyes with their hands but neither could make out the forms of the riders. They were mere specks on the white trail. But the girls held their breath when the horsemen turned from Bear Forks trail and rode in under the precipice that overhung the entrance to Pebbly Pit.
"Whoever it is, they are coming here," said Polly.
"I wonder if it could be Mr. Latimer and Dr. Evans—they may have arrived in Oak Creek sooner than they expected," ventured Eleanor.
"We can watch better from this point than anywhere else, and when they pass the Rainbow Cliffs, we can see who they are," now said Polly.
So they watched impatiently until the riders came from under the hanging walls of rock, and rode again along the top of the shale that covered a wide area between the ravines and the Cliffs.
This great stretch of shale was very treacherous going, as on the both sides were deep gulches, or erosions, made by floods from thaws and storms. An abandoned trail ran quite close to one of these ravines but the land-slides of shale had compelled the people at Pebbly Pit to break out a new and safer trail through the middle of the field. To strange eyes, the old trail on the edge of the gulch, was the harder and easier going, but every one coming to the ranch knew the center-trail to be the one always used. Strangers seldom visited Pebbly Pit, and never without a member of the ranch family, or a neighbor to escort them.
When the two horsemen reached the branching of the trails, they halted, and the girls saw them ponder. One man motioned with a hand at the rough trail running over the top of the shale in the middle of the area, but the other seemed to argue that the edge-trail was the best one to take.
"Oh dear! I hope they won't take that slippery one!" cried Polly, in tense nervousness.