"Come—if we have any luck, I'll show him to you," he said, returning to her. "But you must do just as I say—must be under my orders."
"I will," she promised.
Forthwith, they started. After they had ridden in silence for some distance, covering ground fast, they drew to a walk.
"You know by the trail for where they were heading," she suggested in a voice that was a question.
"I guessed."
Presently, at the entrance to a little cañon, Keller swung down and examined the ground carefully, seemed satisfied, and rode with her into the gully. But she noticed that now he went cautiously, eyes narrowed and wary, with the hard face and the look of a coiled spring she had seen on him before. Her heart drummed with excitement. She was not afraid, but she was fearfully alive.
At the other entrance to the cañon, Larrabie was down again for another examination. What he seemed to find gave him pleasure.
"They've separated," he told Phyllis. "We'll give our attention to the gentleman with the calf, and let his friend go, to-day."
They swung sharply to the north, taking a precipitous trail of shale that Phyllis judged to be a short cut. It was rough going, but their mountain ponies were good for anything less than a perpendicular wall. They clambered up and down like cats, as sure-footed as wild goats.
At the summit of the ridge, Keller pointed out something in the valley below—a rider on horseback, driving a calf.