"Just at sunset. I remember, because the red was on the mountains and
the sky was very brilliant."

"Then by the time he had traveled this far it was dark and this wide
sandy streak was lighter and brighter than the hill up there, covered
with bushes. Come on!"

Mead rushed up the canyon, almost on the run, his eye catching a
toe-print here, a heel track there, a sunken pebble in one spot, a
crushed blade of grass beside the sand in another. The young men who
had gone out first had been through this arroyo the night before, when
the moonlight did not show the faint trail. Since sunrise the
searching parties had gone farther toward the north, covering ground
which the other party had left untouched, for every one believed,
since the failure of the first expedition, that the child must have
turned in that direction and tried to go home.

Mead and Marguerite followed the winding of the arroyo for a mile or
more, and at last, where it headed and the ground was covered by a
thicker growth of bushes, the little tracks climbed the hill. By that
time they were well beyond the farthest point toward the mountains
which any one else believed the child could have reached, and there
were no footprints of previous searchers to perplex their eyes or blot
out such traces as they might find. From the top of the hill they saw
the great body of men again scattering out over the mesa, and knew
that they had been disappointed.

It was some minutes before Mead found any indication of the trail on
the hill. Then the child seemed to have wandered about in the dark
without purpose. For a long time he had kept to the top of the hill,
going backward and forward and circling about, and at last following
its crest toward the mountains.

"This must have been after the moon rose," Mead said, "and while it
was still so low that only the top of the hill was light."

After a time the track turned down the hillside again, and the man and
the girl followed, eagerly scanning the ground for the faint traces of
the child's feet. Slowly and carefully they walked along, sometimes
able to follow the trail without difficulty for long distances, and
again keeping it only by the greatest care. Marguerite noticed that
Mead looked for it always toward the south, and asked him why he did
it.

"Because the moon was considerably past the full and shone more from
the south, and he would have kept his face toward it."

Up and down the hills they went and alo