oon, their
upreared crags seeming to lean against the very blue of the sky. A
sudden memory from his own childish years flashed into his mind.

"I remember when I was a kid I used to think that if I could only get
to the top of a mountain I could jump from it into the sky and see
God. Children always think Heaven is in the sky, don't they? Maybe he
had some such idea. Let's go straight toward the mountain and see if
we can't find his tracks."

They walked down the hill, and in the sand in the bottom of the arroyo
Mead's quick eye caught a faint depression. He stopped Marguerite as
she was about to step on it, and they knelt together to examine it.
There were other footprints all about, but this one little track had
escaped obliteration, and none had noticed it. Marguerite thought it
was the size and shape of his shoe, and they went on over the hill,
watching the ground closely, but seeing nothing more. A man came
running back to tell them that a child's footprints had been found
near the mountain road, two miles or more to the northward. Marguerite
wished to go there at once.

"Yes, certainly, go if you wish," said Mead, "but I think I will stay
here. If they have found his tracks there are plenty of people there
to follow them, but I am anxious to follow this lead."

Marguerite said she would stay with him, and the others hurried over
the mesa to the mountain road, leaving the two alone. They walked
slowly up and down the hills toward the mountains, finding in one
place a little curved depression, as if from the toe of the child's
shoe. And presently, close behind a clump of bushes, they saw two
little shoe-prints clearly defined in the sand. They were so close to
the bush that they had escaped detection.

"Why, he must have hid here while I was looking for him!" Marguerite
exclaimed, "for I came to the top of the hill, not more than twenty
feet away! He must have hid behind this big bush and kept very still
when he heard me calling, and that was how he got away from me!"

They went on over the hills, Mead keeping a fairly straight course
toward the mountains, and constantly running his eye along the ground
in front of them. Twice he saw faint depressions in the sand, partly
obliterated, but enough to make him think they were on the right
track. At last, in a wide, sandy arroyo, he paused before a track in
the farther edge of the sand which turned up the canyon.

"What time was it when you lost him?" he asked.