hat could he do? The signals might mean much. They might mean nothing.
Brian Oakley's words that morning, came to him; "I am recognizing every
possibility, and letting nothing _nothing_, get away from me." Instantly,
he was galvanized into life. Idle thinking, wondering, conjecturing could
accomplish nothing.

Riding as fast as possible down to the boulder beside the trail, where he
was to leave his message, he wrote a note and placed it under the rock.
Then he set out, to ride the fire-break along the top of the range, toward
the distant Granite Peak. An hour's riding took him to the end of the
fire-break, and he saw that from there on he must go afoot.

Tying the bridle-reins over the saddle-horn, and fastening a note to the
saddle, in case any one should find the horse, he turned the animal's head
back the way he had come, and, with a sharp blow, started it forward. He
knew that the horse--one of Carleton's--would probably make its way home.
Turning, he set his face toward the lonely peak; carrying his canteen and
what was left of his lunch.

There was no trail for his feet now. At times, he forced his way through
and over bushes of buckthorn and manzanita that seemed, with their sharp
thorns and tangled branches, to be stubbornly fighting him back. At times,
he made his way along some steep slope, from pine to pine, where the
ground was slippery with the brown needles, and where to lose his footing
meant a fall of a thousand feet. Again, he scaled some rocky cliff,
clinging with his fingers to jutting points of rock, finding niches and
projections for his feet; or, with the help of vine and root and bush,
found a way down some seemingly impossible precipice. Now and then, from
some higher point, he sighted Granite Peak. Often, he saw, far below, on
one hand the great canyon, and on the other the wide Galena Valley. Always
he pushed forward. His face was scratched and stained; his clothing was
torn by the bushes; his hands were bloody from the sharp rocks; his body
reeked with sweat; his breath came in struggling gasps; but he would not
stop. He felt himself driven, as it were, by some inner power that made
him insensible to hardship or death. Far behind him, the sun dropped below
the sky-line of the distant San Gabriels, but he did not notice. Only when
the dusk of the coming night was upon him, did he realize that the day was
gone.

On a narrow shelf, in the lee of a great cliff, he hastily gathered
material for