Chapter XIII. Set Afoot

The tracks of the six horses led down into a rock-bottomed arroyo so deep in most places that all view of the surrounding mesa was shut off completely, save where the ragged tops of a distant line of hills pushed up into the dazzling blue of the sky. The heat, down here among the rocks, was all but unbearable; and when they discovered that no tracks led out of the arroyo on the farther side, the Happy Family dismounted and walked to save their horses while they divided into two parties and hunted up and down the arroyo for the best trail.

It was just such vexatious delays as this which had kept them always a day's ride or more behind their quarry, and Luck's hand trembled with nervous irritability when he turned back and banded Applehead one of those small, shrill police whistles whose sound carries so far, and which are much used by motion-picture producers for the long-distance direction of scenes.

"I happened to have a couple in my pocket," he explained hurriedly. "You know the signals, don't you? One long, two short will mean you've picked up the trail. Three or more short, quick ones is an emergency call, for all hands to come running."

"Well, they's one thing you want to keep in mind, Luck," Applehead urged from his superior trail craft. "They might be sharp enough to ride in here a ways and come out the same side they rode in at. Yuh want to hunt both sides as yuh go up."

"Sure," said Luck, and hurried away up the arroyo with Pink, Big Medicine, Andy and the Native Son at his heels, leading the two pack-horses that belonged to their party. In the opposite direction went Applehead and the others, their eyes upon the ground watching for the faintest sign of hoofprints.

That blazing ball of torment, the sun, slid farther and farther down to the skyline, tempering its heat with the cool promise of dusk. Away up the arroyo, Luck stopped for breath after a sharp climb up through a narrow gash in the sheer wall of what was now a small canon, and saw that to search any farther in that direction would be useless. Across the arroyo--that had narrowed and deepened until it was a canon--Andy Green was mopping his face with his handkerchief and studying a bold hump of jumbled bowlders and ledges, evidently considering whether it was worth while toiling up to the top. A little below him, the Native Son was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the vicious precision of frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine and Pink were holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke of their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of their voices.

Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a rock that was shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his "makings" and with his feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs, wearily rolled a cigarette.

"How