At
one place she stopped, and stood perfectly still, her skirts held
back tightly with both hands, while she stared fascinatedly at a
red smear upon a broken branch of sage and the smooth-packed
hollow in the sand where he must have lain.
"He's got nerve--I'll say that much for him," she observed aloud,
and went on.
The footprints were plain where he crossed the grade road near
the edge of the bluff, but from there on it was harder to follow
them because of the great patches of black lava rock lying even
with the surface of the ground, where a dozen men might walk
abreast and leave no sign that the untrained eye, at least, could
detect.
"This is a case for Indians," she mused, frowning over an open
space where all was rock. "Injun Charlie would hunt tracks all
day for a dollar or two; only he'd make tracks just to prove
himself the real goods." She sighed, stood upon her tiptoes, and
peered out over the sage to get her bearings, then started on at
a hazard. She went a few rods, found herself in a thick tangle
of brush through which she could not force her way, started to
back out, and caught her hair on a scraggly scrub which seemed to
have as many prongs as there are briers on a rosebush.
Pages:
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352