At last the gulch began opening out into another valley.
Before leaving the deep shadows of the hills Bob rose in his stirrups, to sweep the country with his field-glass. After several minutes of anxious search the powerful instrument brought into view the horseman already climbing the side of a hill directly opposite.
Now and again, riding in and out among the trees, he was lost to view, and, finally, disappeared.
“Perhaps I’ve made a pretty mess of it,” soliloquized Bob, with a look at the darkening sky. “Even if I started back now I couldn’t get very far before the night would be down on me black as pitch.”
At a rattling pace the lad pounded across the valley, then up the hill. On reflecting that the man might have halted somewhere in the vicinity, he proceeded slowly, never relaxing his vigilance for a moment.
The timber grew thickly on the slopes; deep, gloomy shadows lay across his path. The sky between the interlocking branches appeared in weirdly shaped patches of light. The outlook was not encouraging.
At the top of the hill Bob could find no point of vantage, as before, from which to gaze over the surrounding landscape. The timber was too thick, the inequalities of the ground too great.
“Still,” he reflected, “I’ll take a chance, and plunge ahead.”
And when night finally came Bob Somers found himself on the slope of another wooded hill. He dismounted, picketed and unsaddled his horse, then sat down on a grassy knoll to think over the situation. His sudden whim had turned out disastrously. He was miles and miles away from his companions. In all his travels he had never been in the midst of a more desolate-looking place; and the trail was utterly lost.