, sometimes Nan
picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of
the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.

Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears
warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the
mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the
waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a
dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling
water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock
which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they
dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the
two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had
cut them off their refuge.

"No use, Nan," said de Spain. "There isn't any other trail, is
there?"

She told him there was no other. "And this will run all night," she
added. "Sometimes it runs like this for days. I ought to have known
there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the
mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry," she said, turning to him and as
if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, "how did you happen to
come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?"

"I came because you sent for me," he answered, surprised.

"But I didn't send for you."

He stopped, dumfounded. "What do you mean, Nan?" he demanded uneasily.
"I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you
away."

"Henry! I didn't send any message--when did you get one?"

"Last night, in my office in Sleepy Cat, from a man that refused to
give his name."

"I never sent any message to you," she insisted in growing wonderment.
"I have been locked in a room for three days, dearie. The Lord knows I
wanted to send you word. Who ever telephoned a message like that? Was
it a trap to get you in here?"

He told her the story--of the strenuous efforts he had made to
discover the identity of the messenger--and how he had been balked.
"No matter," said Nan, at last. "It couldn't have been a trap. It
must have been a friend, surely, not an enemy."

"Or," said de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might
escape, and putting his face close to hers, "some mildly curious
person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men
would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the
mountains both are trying to marry at once."

"Henry,"