“When on that evening she passed me, going down into the garden, she seemed to have grown taller, so martial was her carriage. I sat long in the gathering dusk with little note of passing time, when suddenly, a woman’s shriek, clear, high and long-drawn, rose from the garden, followed almost instantly by the thunder of galloping hoofs upon the stony bed of the river, a plash of water, the muffled sound of a falling earth-bank, and then the lessening throb of flying feet that died upon the night.
“The shriek, the rush of the trampling feet through the garden, the vault of the steed over the adobe wall, and the uproar of the steel-shod hoofs upon the stones of the river-bed did not occupy five seconds, and before I could leap from the porch and rush through the garden shrubbery the beat of the retreating feet sounded faint and far.
“The aroused household acted with desperate energy. Swift messengers called the assistance of all the neighboring rancheros. The cinching of saddle-girths, the clank of arms, the trampling of impatient horses, the sharp orders of Pico, and the headlong incoming of horsemen from the outer night, told of stern preparation that boded ill for the frenzied abductor.
“But before the pursuit could be taken up the storm came over the Obsidian Hills and broke upon the valley with lightning, thunder, roaring wind and such a downpour of rain that within half an hour the river could not be crossed except by a detour of many miles, and then only by leading our horses singly upon a frail swinging bridge intended only for pedestrians. However, the cloudburst passed as quickly as it came, and the trail was taken before midnight. Despite the obliterating effects of the storm, the trace was easy to follow, for one had joined us whose fame as a tracker in mountain and desert was supreme in Arizona and Mexico, and when Cady rode out, taking the trail at a gallop, all were content to follow blindly.
“None questioned his skill, nor his coolness and courage in the hour of conflict. All had heard stories of his almost miraculous feats in the following of horse-thieves and marauding Indians to their ruin, but few, I think, were prepared for the ease and certainty with which this man-hunter carried the trail at a speed as high as we dared urge our horses, over flinty mesas, up slopes of broken lava, through thorny fields of cactus and sage-brush, across a succession of lateral ravines that now, for the first time in many years, brought down to the river a hundred roaring streams, and on across scrub and chaparral, to the south, toward the outlaw’s hoped-for refuge in the mountains of Mexico.
“It was a wild ride and there were thirty wild men riding. Pico, half crazed by the horror of his daughter’s possible fate, urging on with brief, inflammatory appeals the already excessive ardor of the pursuers; Cady, silent and alert, rode a rod or two in advance, followed by Kenneth, Pico’s foreman, a gigantic Scotchman, a violent man of great physical power and energy. I rode with Pico when the exigencies of the trail permitted. The others followed as best they could keep the pace.
“At sunrise we were thirty miles south of the Pico ranch and upon the high mesa two miles east of the river. Here the trail entered, but did not cross, a deep and rough ravine that ran at right angles to the course hitherto taken by the fleeing desperado. Cady plunged without hesitation down the steep bank and clung to the lessening trace over bare spaces of slab stone, clean-washed by the storm, and across acres of boulder-covered bars, until the portal of the canyon was reached, where the storms of ages had cut a narrow channel to the river. Before this rock-walled gateway Cady halted, leaped from his horse and waited until all had come up.
“‘Dismount, men!’ he said, ‘The beast is at bay.’
“‘This canyon,’ he said, ‘twists to the right a hundred yards below, then opens into a big triangle facing the river. The jaws are two hundred yards apart, but each jaw is jammed square against the precipitous bank of the river. The bank on this side is a basalt bluff twenty feet high; the opposite bank is low, and a trail leads up a ravine from the water to the Obsidian Hills. Tigre knows the trail, but he forgot the storm. Do you hear the roar of the river? It is filled with jagged blocks of basalt, and the flood is now a regular water-cyclone. No horse or man that ever lived could cross it. The game is bagged. There is a heavy thicket along the bluff on this side of the river and he will be in the brush. There will be a fight. Every man must cover himself as best he can. Take no chances on Tigre Palladis. Shoot anything that moves; the woman will be hid.’
“Dismounted, we followed down the gorge until we reached the outlet and noted the heavy wall of brush that hid the river from our view. Beyond this the rage of the waters made itself manifest in terrible bellowings. Cady said: