hen get some rest yourself,
and be ready for whatever comes next."

He turned to those he had held to go with him; "All right, boys, let's
ride. Sheriff will take care of the Fairlands end. Come, Aaron."

All the way up the Oak Knoll trail the Ranger rode in the lead, bending
low from his saddle, his gaze fixed on the little path. Twice he
dismounted and walked ahead, leaving the chestnut to follow or to wait, at
his word. When they came out on the pipe-line trail, he halted the party,
and, on foot, went carefully over the ground either way from the point
where they stood.

"Boys," he said at last, "I have a hunch that there was a horse on this
trail last night. It's been so blamed dry, and for so long, though, that I
can't be sure. I held you two men because I know you are good trailers.
Follow the pipe-line up the canyon, and see what you can find. It isn't
necessary to say stay with it if you strike anything that even looks like
it might be a lead. Aaron and I will take the other way, and up the Galena
trail to the fire-break."

While Brian Oakley had been searching for signs in the little path, and
the artist, with the others, was waiting, Aaron King's mind went back to
that day when he and Conrad Lagrange had sat there under the oaks and, in
a spirit of irresponsible fun, had committed themselves to the leadership
of Croesus. To the young man, now, that day, with its care-free leisure,
seemed long ago. Remembering the novelist's fanciful oration to the burro,
he thought grimly how unconscious they had been, in their merriment, of
the great issues that did actually rest upon the seemingly trivial
incident. He recalled, too, with startling vividness, the times that he
had climbed to that spot with Sibyl, or, reaching it from either way on
the pipe-line, had gone with her down the zigzag path to the road in the
canyon below. Had she, last night, alone, or with some unwelcome
companions, paused a moment under those oaks? Had she remembered the hours
that she had spent there with him?

As he followed the Ranger over the ground that he had walked with her,
that day of their last climb together, it seemed to him that every step
of the way was haunted by her sweet personality. The objects along the
trail--a point of rock, a pine, the barrel where they had filled their
canteen, a broken section of the concrete pipe left by the workmen, the
very rocks and cliffs, the flowers--dry and withered now--that grew along
the li