In this manner the party had proceeded but a few miles when Mortimer Chalmers, who, alone with his grief and self-accusing reflections, rode in advance, was seen to suddenly clap spurs to his horse and dash off down the valley. He had discovered a riderless pony grazing on the coarse herbage of the bottom, and was filled with a momentary hope that by some means his dearly loved brother might after all have found his way back to the river.
When the others overtook him they at once recognized the animal which was cropping the tough grasses with starving avidity as the broncho that had borne Todd Chalmers from their sight six days before. Its belly was bloated with water, of which it had evidently drunk a prodigious quantity, but it was otherwise gaunt from hunger. It still wore a broken bridle, and the saddle was found at no great distance away. To this were still attached the rifle, now broken, the roll of blankets, soiled and torn, and the empty canteen, that had belonged to the poor lad, of whose fate they brought melancholy tidings. A fragment of picket-rope still remained attached to the pony's neck, but its frayed end, worn with long dragging through sand and over rocks, showed that the animal must have traversed many miles of desert since the time when last he bore his young master.
The broncho's trail was discovered and followed to the distant brow of the bluffs, but beyond that it had been obliterated by wind-swept sands, and offered no further clew.
As no one of the party would ever care to use that broken saddle, and as it was all that was left to them of the merry lad who was lost, they buried it where they found it, with all its accoutrements. When they turned silently from the little mound of earth that covered it, all felt with Mortimer Chalmers as though they were leaving the grave of his light-hearted, hot-headed, affectionate, and impetuous young brother.
And now let us see what had really become of the lad whom his recent comrades mourned so sincerely, and who we left sometime since gazing anxiously at the gaudily decked monuments of the Painted Desert.
When in his thoughtless race after the coveted prize of a black-tailed deer, Todd emerged from the ravine that led to the plateau, and gained a wide range of vision, he was sorely disappointed to see the animals he was pursuing skimming across the sands more than a mile away and approaching a tall mesa, behind which he knew they would in another moment disappear. He was about to give over the chase with a sigh of disappointment, when, to his surprise, one of the fleeing deer seemed to fall, though it almost immediately regained its feet and followed after its companions.
"Hurrah!" shouted Todd, again urging his pony to the chase. "One of them is wounded, and I'll have it yet. Mort will forgive me when I bring fresh venison into camp."
Just before reaching a rocky buttress of the mesa the lad heard shots behind him and, with a backward glance, saw two horsemen in hot pursuit. One of them he knew to be his brother, and both of them were waving to him to come back.
"I won't go without something to show for my hunt if I can help it," muttered the boy to himself, as he dashed around a corner of the rocky wall, and also disappeared from view. He had hoped to find his wounded deer there, but neither it nor the others were in sight, though he could still distinguish their tracks. Following these, he was led through a narrow and crooked valley that finally divided into several branches. The deer had taken one of these that led sharply to the right amid a confused mass of rocks.
"They are making a circuit back toward the river," thought the young hunter, "and that suits me exactly, for I shall be able to reach it and regain camp without being caught by Mort like a naughty child. That I couldn't stand, and I would rather stay out all night than submit to anything so humiliating."