t took active charge of the posse.

"Stand here, on this rock," he commanded. "This road's been tracked up
too much already. You, John, and Tibbetts and Simmins, there, come 'long
with me to see what you can make out."

The old mountaineers retraced their steps, examining carefully every
inch of the ground. They returned vastly puzzled.

"No sabe," California John summed up their investigations. "There's the
man's track leadin' his hoss. The hoss had on new shoes, and the robber
did his own shoeing. So we ain't got any blacksmiths to help us."

"How do you know he shod the horse himself?" asked Jimmy Gaynes.

"Shoes just alike on front and back feet. Shows he must just have tacked
on ready-made shoes. A blacksmith shapes 'em different. Those tracks
leads right up to this rock: and here they quit. If you can figger how a
horse, a man, and nigh four hundredweight of gold dust got off this
rock, I'll be obleeged."

The men looked up at the perpendicular cliff to their right; over the
sheer precipice at their left; and upon the untracked deep, white dust
ahead.

"Furthermore," California John went on, impressively, after a moment,
"where did that man and that hoss come from in the beginning? Not from
up this way. They's no fresh tracks comin' down the road no more than
they's fresh tracks goin' up. Not from camp. They's no tracks
whatsomever on the road below, except our'n and the stage outfit's."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Jimmy, his eyes shining with interest.

"Sartin sure," replied California John, positively. "We didn't take no
chances on that."

"Then he must have come into the road from up the mountain or down the
mountain."

"Where?" demanded California John. "A man afoot might scramble down in
one or two places; but not a hoss. They ain't no tracks either side the
muss-up where the express was stopped. And at that p'int the mountain is
straight up and down, like it is here."

They talked it over, and argued it, and reexamined the evidence, but
without avail. The stubborn facts remained: Between the hold-up and the
sheet of rock was one set of tracks going one way; elsewhere, nothing.

CHAPTER II

Nearly a year passed. If it had not been for the very tangible loss of a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the little community at Bright's
Cove might almost have come to doubt the evidence of their senses and
the accuracy of their memories, so fantastic on sober reflection did all
the circum