Late in the afternoon she came to Emerald Cañon, where, sunk three hundred feet below the plains, there was a chain of pools and an acre or so of green meadow starred with the ashes of old camp fires.
In this secluded cañon Maple Leaf hobbled her broncho and made camp for the night within sound of a high cascade of water, which fell noisily into a pool darkened by overhanging trees.
She shared her solitude with a family of little foxes at play on a grassy knoll and with a crane, which stood on one leg at the water's edge.
She watched the crane, wondering how long it would remain motionless in that position, and as she watched, a waft of smoke from her fire drifted towards the bird, which rose into the air and flapped lazily away into the blue gloom.
Suddenly as she followed its flight the girl's quick eyes were drawn upward to the rim of the shadowed cañon, where a waving line of ripened grass glowed orange against the sky, and she became aware of a filmy cloud of dust, which rose from the high plain beyond.
She clasped her fingers tightly, drew back into the shadow, and crouched there, listening, watching.
The dust cloud thickened, and above the deep murmur of the waterfall she caught the unmistakable sound of the tramping of horses and the rumble of wagon wheels.
She thought of Indians and of the need of concealing her fire, lest they should discover her and perhaps steal her pony.
Earlier in the day she had come upon the marks of horses' hoofs in the prairie dust. The horses had not all been shod, and she had known by this that their riders were Indians. She began to wish that she had taken the loaded gun which Rippling Water had offered her. But her anxiety quickly left her.
Presently a mounted man came out upon the edge of the ravine. The sunlight shone warmly upon his chestnut horse and flamed upon his scarlet tunic. He had come to a halt not half-a-mile away from her, and he was looking down towards the drifting mist of her wood fire. For a moment he glanced back over his shoulder, then moved onward in her direction, followed, after a while, by some twenty riders, each with a carbine poised across the horn of his stock saddle. They were a troop of the North-West Mounted Police.