s under
the sky told where the forests began. But the three men looked neither
east nor west, but only steadfastly across the valley.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere," he
said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "But, after all, they
had a full day's start."

"They don't know we are after them," said the little man on the white
horse.

"_She_ would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to
himself.

"Even then they can't go fast. They've got no beast but the mule, and all
to-day the girl's foot has been bleeding----"

The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him.
"Do you think I haven't seen that?" he snarled.

"It helps, anyhow," whispered the little man to himself.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. "They can't be over
the valley," he said. "If we ride hard----"

He glanced at the white horse and paused.

"Curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and turned
to scan the beast his curse included.

The little man looked down between the melancholy ears of his steed.

"I did my best," he said.

The two others stared again across the valley for a space. The gaunt man
passed the back of his hand across the scarred lip.

"Come up!" said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. The little
man started and jerked his rein, and the horse hoofs of the three made a
multitudinous faint pattering upon the withered grass as they turned back
towards the trail...

They rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through
a waste of prickly twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of thorny
branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. And there the
trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this
scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by
leaning beside the horses' necks and pausing ever and again, even these
white men could contrive to follow after their prey.

There were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and
ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. And once the
leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod.
And at that under his breath he cursed her for a fool.

The gaunt man checked his leader's tracking, and the little man on the
white horse rode behind, a man lost in a dream. They rode one after
another, the man with the silver bridle