The searchers were all at the ranch when the two men arrived. No one had a
word of encouragement to report. A messenger from the Sheriff brought no
light on the mystery of the automobile. The two men who had followed the
pipe-line trail had found nothing. A few times, they thought they had
signs that a horse had been over the trail the night before, but there was
no certainty; and after the pipe-line reached the floor of the canyon
there was absolutely nothing. Jack Carleton was back from the Galena
Valley neighborhood, and, with him, was the horseman who had gone down the
canyon the evening before. The man was known to all. He had been hunting,
and was on his way home when Henry Carleton and the Ranger had seen him.
He had come, now, to help in the search.

Picking a half dozen men from the party, Brian Oakley sent them to spend
the night riding the higher trails and fire-breaks, watching for
camp-fire lights. The others, he ordered to rest, in readiness to take up
the search at daylight, should the night riders come in without results.

Aaron King, exhausted, physically and mentally, sank into a stupor that
could scarcely be called sleep.

At daybreak, the riders who had been all night on the higher trails and
fire-breaks, searching the darkness for the possible gleam of a
camp-fire's light, came in.

All that day--Wednesday--the mountain horsemen rode, widening the area of
their search under the direction of the Ranger. From sundown until long
after dark, they came straggling wearily back; their horses nearly
exhausted, the riders beginning to fear that Sibyl would never be found
alive. There was no further word from the Sheriff at Fairlands.

Then suddenly, out of the blackness of the night, a rider from the other
side of the Galenas arrived with the word that the girl's horse had been
found. The animal was grazing in the neighborhood of Pine Glen. The saddle
and the horse's sides were stained with dirt, as if the animal had fallen.
The bridle-reins had been broken. The horse might have rolled on the
saddle; he might have stepped on the bridle-reins; he might have fallen
and left his rider lying senseless. In any case, they reasoned, the animal
would scarcely have found his way over the Galena range after he had been
left to wander at will.

Brian Oakley decided to send the main company of riders over into the Pine
Glen country, to continue the search there. He knew that the men who found
the horse would follo