"Watch your step there, boys!" cried Snake, as he saw What was likely to prove a bad turning. "I don't see how Dick got around it as he did, taking it at the gallop," he went on.
And, as it happened, Dick had not exactly made it, for when Bud and Nort reached the dangerous turn, slightly after Dick had disappeared abound it, they saw no sight of their companion.
"Pull up!" cried Bud sharply. "There's something wrong!" Nort was beginning to think so himself, and he hauled his steed back with such good will and energy that the animal was almost on its haunches.
"Where in the world did he go?" cried Bud.
Nort asked the same question, for there lay the narrow trail before them, running along a ledge, with a shelving bank of shale and sand on one side and a towering face of rock on the other.
Snake Purdee raced at such speed around the turn, in spite of his own admonition to the boy ranchers, that the cowboy nearly ran down Bud and Nort.
"Where's Dick?" cried Snake, at once aware that the stout lad was not in sight.
"He's vamoosed—somewhere," said Bud. "Maybe he met-up with that
Greaser and——"
At that moment, however, there came a cry, unmistakably of distress, seemingly from some distance ahead and down below the high and narrow trail on which the party had come to a halt.
"There's Dick now!" cried Nort, recognizing his brother's voice.