aso. For there was
precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from
portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged.
Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of
Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had
been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert.
The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old
road lay untrodden in the sun.

Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A
traveler followed that lonely road to Double Mountain; and behind,
half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him.
The traveler's sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff
Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square;
the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to
the best of Jeff's knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.

"Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day," soliloquized
Jeff. "Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon.
Civilization's getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are
fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double
Mountain. If I can't there's no sort of use trying to get away on you!
I'll play hide-and-go-seek-'em. That'll let you out, anyway, so cheer
up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I'll buy you and
make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you'll like it.
Get along now!"

Twenty miles to Jeff's right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an
unbroken tangent of ninety miles' stretch. A southbound passenger train
crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date:
behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shining
straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this
vast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sighting
beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed
the trinomial line.

Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain--whence the name, Hidden, when
done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped
there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the
clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed
drowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at
no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust app