lders where lizards sun themselves and trout lurk in
shaded pools.

When Whispering Smith and his companions were fairly started on the
last day of their ride, it was toward this rift in the Mission range
that the trail led them. Sinclair, with consummate cleverness, had
rejoined his companions; but the attempt to get into the Cache, and
his reckless ride into Medicine Bend, had reduced their chances of
escape to a single outlet, and that they must find up Crawling Stone
Valley. The necessity of it was spelled in every move the pursued men
had made for twenty-four hours. They were riding the pick of mountain
horseflesh and covering their tracks by every device known to the high
country. Behind them, made prudent by unusual danger, rode the best
men the mountain division could muster for the final effort to bring
them to account. The fast riding of the early week had given way to
the pace of caution. No trail sign was overlooked, no point of
concealment directly approached, no hiding-place left unsearched.

The tension of a long day of this work was drawing to a close when the
sun set and left the big wash in the shadow of the mountains. On the
higher ground to the right, Kennedy and Scott were riding where they
could command the gullies of the precipitous left bank of the river.
High on the left bank itself, worming his way like a snake from point
to point of concealment through the scanty brush of the mountainside,
crawled Wickwire, commanding the pockets in the right bank. Closer to
the river on the right and following the trail itself over shale and
rock and between scattered bowlders, Whispering Smith, low on his
horse's neck, rode slowly.

It was almost too dark to catch the slight discolorations where
pebbles had been disturbed on a flat surface or the calk of a
horseshoe had slipped on the uneven face of a ledge, and he had halted
under an uplift to wait for Wickwire on the distant left to advance,
when, half a mile below him, a horseman crossing the river rode slowly
past a gap in the rocks and disappeared below the next bend. He was
followed in a moment by a second rider and a third. Whispering Smith
knew he had not been seen. He had flushed the game, and, wheeling his
horse, rode straight up the river-bank to high ground, where he could
circle around widely below them. They had slipped between his line and
Wickwire's, and were doubling back, following the dry bed of the
stream. It was impossible to recall K