“I dunno,” he replied. “Let’s keep on goin’.”
They went on again, following the trail, down and down, until there seemed no end to it. And then it ended abruptly against a thick screen of mesquite. Cultus lighted a match and made an examination. Some one had gone around the right-hand side of the thicket. The marks of his boots on the soft ground told this much.
They followed him as well as they could. The moonlight did not strike down there. Then they came out suddenly on flat ground, the level of Padre Canyon. They could see the moonlight on the peaks and spires as they stood there hand in hand, looking foolishly at each other. Cultus looked back at the spot, wondering where their trail had been, but only the tangle of mesquite and sheer walls stared back at them.
But who had caused the explosion, and why, he wondered? Who would be dynamiting those cliffs at night? Who could be the man who⸺ Suddenly it struck him.
“Jane, do you know what we’ve done? We’ve come down over the Lost Trail! Just as sure as fate.”
“The Lost Trail? You mean, we’ve found it? But who⸺” She hesitated for a moment, and then whispered, as though afraid some one else might hear, “Blaze Nolan knew. Maybe he told Kendall Marsh where it was, and, for fear they might not give him a chance to tell us he dynamited it to-night, Cultus. Don’t you understand? Blaze Nolan has fixed the Lost Trail so that no man can use it again.”
“Well, that’s a good theory,” whimsically.
“Maybe he knew we were up there, and he waited until we got past the spot before he blew it up.”
“Yeah, he might have done that, Jane.”
But Cultus knew better. The man who had set off that blast had used enough slow-burning fuse to allow himself plenty of time to get off the cliffs, and the gods of luck had allowed them to get past the danger point before it exploded.