The robbers quickly stopped the horses, relieved the two passengers of their possessions, secured the express matter and started for the mountain wilds, taking with them the four dapple-gray horses that Steve Gibbons had prided himself so much in driving.
Gibbons had been carefully cared for by the mountain rancher and his wife, where the two passengers were stopping. A physician had been sent for and dressed his wounds. He said Gibbons would get well; the bullet had struck a rib and glanced off.
After learning these meager details, the posse pushed on into the mountains in hot pursuit. They were under command of the sheriff of the county. The trail of the desperadoes was easily followed. Along in the afternoon, the sheriff called a halt for refreshments. The horses were tethered with lariats to some trees that grew near a mountain stream, and permitted to graze while the men refreshed themselves with lunches which they had brought along.
“We’re twenty-four hours behind the rascals,” said the sheriff, “and I don’t know whether we’ll overtake them or not.” Some of the men were eager to go on, and others were ready to give up the chase. After a rest of an hour or such a matter, the order was given to again mount, and the trail was followed until darkness set in. Sleeping on the ground with the starry canopy for a covering was a new experience for Vance, but he was determined not to show the white feather. What others endured he would endure.
About ten o’clock the next morning, they came to a mountain gorge and followed the trail to a point where it seemed quite impossible for a horseman to ascend, it was so steep and rugged. The sheriff and a few of his men dismounted and went on ahead, looking for the trail. They found horses’ tracks, but where could they have gone? The grass was deep and heavy in the center of the gulch, and fringed with trees and boulders on either side. Finally the sheriff returned and reported the trail as lost. "They have evidently come into this ‘pocket’ of a canon to throw us off their trail. We will have to return to the mouth of the gorge and see in what other direction the trail leads.”
The afternoon was spent in searching for the lost trail. Night overtook the party again, and rations were very short. Their meal was a frugal one, and far from satisfying the hunger of men who had ridden hard all day. The horses were securely fastened and the party lay down to sleep. Vance made his bed on some bunch grass that grew under the wide-spreading branches of a mountain pine. He could plainly hear the rippling of a stream which ran near by, and when deep silence settled down over the landscape, save the occasional snort of one of the horses, the singing of the stream grew louder and louder. The smell of pine added to the deliciousness of his novel and strange surroundings. Weariness soon overcame the discomforts of his improvised bed, and he sank to sleep. Suddenly he awoke in the middle of the night, but found everyone else was deep in slumber, save the two guards that had been left on duty a few yards from the camp. The stars were winking at him from above; a wolf was howling a dismal cadence, and was answered by another far away in a different direction. An owl hooted its discordant strain from the dead branch of a tree a short distance away.
He closed his eyes, and thought of the wonderful change that a few months had brought into his life; but these thoughts one after another vanished; and still other fancies went pell-mell through his imagination in the panorama of thought. Presently a face appeared on this mental canvas—so sweet, so tender, so trusting, and wreathed in that smile he knew so well. He started, opened his eye and murmured, “Louise.”