ome used to the hard, gaunt,
black face she saw sadness and thought in it. One thing Lucy had
noticed was that Creech never failed to spare a horse, if it was
possible. He would climb on foot over bad places.

Night soon mantled the gorge in blackness thick as pitch. Lucy could
not tell whether her eyes were open or shut, so far as what she saw was
concerned. Her eyes seemed filled, however, with a thousand pictures of
the wild and tortuous canyons and gorges through which she had ridden
that day. The ache in her limbs and the fever in her blood would not
let her sleep. It seemed that these were forever to be a part of her.
For twelve hours she had ridden and walked with scarce a thought of the
nature of the wild country, yet once she lay down to rest her mind was
an endless hurrying procession of pictures--narrow red clefts choked
with green growths--yellow gorges and weathered slides--dusty,
treacherous divides connecting canyons--jumbles of ruined cliffs and
piles of shale--miles and miles and endless winding miles yellow, low,
beetling walls. And through it all she had left a trail.

Next day Creech climbed out of that low-walled canyon, and Lucy saw a
wild, rocky country cut by gorges, green and bare, or yellow and
cedared. The long, black-fringed line she had noticed the day before
loomed closer; overhanging this crisscrossed region of canyons. Every
half-hour Creech would lead them downward and presently climb out
again. There were sand and hard ground and thick turf and acres and
acres of bare rock where even a shod horse would not leave a track.

But the going was not so hard--there was not so much travel on foot for
Lucy--and she finished that day in better condition than the first one.

Next day Creech proceeded with care and caution. Many times he left the
direct route, bidding Lucy wait for him, and he would ride to the rims
of canyons or the tops of ridges of cedar forests, and from these
vantage-points he would survey the country. Lucy gathered after a while
that he was apprehensive of what might be encountered, and particularly
so of what might be feared in pursuit. Lucy thought this strange,
because it was out of the question for any one to be so soon on
Creech's trail.

These peculiar actions of Creech were more noticeable on the third day,
and Lucy grew apprehensive herself. She could not divine why. But when
Creech halted on a high crest that gave a sweeping vision of the broken
table-land they