in low spoken quiet, their voices sounding back upon them with an odd
dead effect. They went faster than Old Pete was wont to travel, for
they meant to reach the spot of the tragedy before the early shadows
should begin to sift down from the high world above. Tharon went
eagerly, her eyes dilated.

Always she had dreamed of the Canon Country. Always she had wondered
what it was like. When she left the mouth of the black roofed cut and
came out into the narrow, rockwalled canyon with its painted faces
reaching up into the very skies, she gasped with amaze. Above her head
she could see the endless cuts and crosscuts, the standing spires and
narrow wedgelike walls that made a labyrinthian maze.

Billy, close beside her, as always, watched her with a pensive
sadness.

And so the Vigilantes went in and up along the lower ways. There were
those among them who had been here before, who from time to time had
accompanied the snow-packer on his nightly trips just for the
curiosity of the thing. These several men, among whom were Albright
from the Pomo settlement--a squawman--took the lead, and Albright,
keen as a hound on trail, picked up Old Pete's marks and signs at a
running walk.

And so it was, that, while the sun was still shining on the high peaks
above and the canyons were filled with a strange pink light reflected
from the red and yellow faces of the rock, the Vigilantes came
suddenly to a halt, for Albright had stopped.

"Here's where it happened," he said, "there's a blood-sign." And he
pointed to the Wall at a spot about breast high. A thin dark line, no
wider than a blade of grass and about as long, spraying out to nothing
at the upper end, leaned along the rock like a native marking. No
other eye had seen it. Not one in a thousand would have seen it.

"Good," said Kenset, "you're the man for more of this."

They crowded around and examined the telltale spray.

Not one among them but knew it for the stain of blood.

From that they spread out and back to search the sliding heaps of
dust-like powdery rock-slide that lay everywhere along the walls.

It took Albright five minutes by Kenset's watch to find the disturbed
and clumsily smoothed dump which held all that was mortal of the
snow-packer.

"Miss Last," said Kenset as the men began to dig with the spades
brought along for the purpose, "you had best step back a bit."

But Tharon pushed nearer.

"This is my work," she said with dignity. "I started t