of
the night and without the slightest impatience. He heard in the
distance the coyotes and the owls but no horseman passed nor did the
sound of hoofs come within hearing. Then reining his pony's head again
toward the black heights of the Lodge Pole range he continued his
journey.

Soon all semblance of any trail was left behind and he rode of
necessity more slowly. More than once he halted, seemingly to reassure
himself as to his bearings for he was pushing his way where few men
would care to ride even in daylight. He was feeling across precipitous
gashes and along treacherous ledges esteemed by Bighorn but feared by
horse and man; and among huge masses of rocky fragments that had
crashed from dizzy heights above before finding a resting place. And
even then they had been heaved and tumbled about by the fury of
mountain storms.

Laramie was, in fact, nearing the place--by the least passable of all
approaches--where he had hidden Hawk. Yet he did not hesitate either
to stop or to listen or to double on his trail more than once.
Maneuvering in this manner for a long time he emerged on a small
opening, turned almost squarely about and rode half a mile.
Dismounting at this point and lifting his rifle from its scabbard he
slung his bag over his shoulder and walked rapidly forward.

The hiding place had been well chosen. On a high plateau of the
Falling Wall country, so broken as to forbid all chance travel and to
be secure from accidental intrusion--a breeding place for grizzlies and
mountain lions--there had once been opened a considerable silver mining
camp. Substantial sums had been spent in development and from an old
Turkey Creek trail a road had been blasted and dug across the open
country divided by the canyon of the Falling Wall river. In its escape
from the mountains the river at this point cuts a deep gash through a
rock barrier and from this striking formation, known as the canyon of
the Falling Wall, the river takes its name.

Where the old mine road crosses the plateau an ambitious bridge, as
Laramie once told Kate, had been projected across the river. It was
designed to replace a ferry at the bottom of the canyon but with the
ruinous decline in the value of silver the mines had been abandoned; a
weather-beaten abutment at the top of the south canyon wall alone
remained to recall the story. The earth and rock fill behind this
abutment had been washed out by storms leaving the framing timbers
ab