Not a sound except the breathing of his horse. The breeze had not yet come up, no animal life was moving. An uncanny sense of desertion was upon the place and for a moment Bayard knew real panic. What if some violence.... "Lytton!" he called, cutting his half-formed, horrible thought short, and stepped into the room. No answer greeted him and, after listening a moment, he again shouted. Then walked swiftly to the room where Ned Lytton had lived through those weeks. He knocked, waited, flung open the door and grunted at the emptiness which he found. One more room remained to be inspected--his room--and he turned to the door which was almost closed. He rapped lightly on the casing; louder, called for Lytton, grasped the knob and entered. The overturned table, broken lamp, the spreading stain of its oil, the rumpled rugs yielded their mute suggestion, and he moved slowly about, eyeing them, searching for other evidence, searching for something more than the fact that a struggle had taken place, hoping to find it, fearing to know. He stopped suddenly, holding his head to one side as though listening to catch a distant sound. "Both saddle horses gone ... they're gone," he muttered to himself and started from the room on a run. He inspected the saddle rack under his wagonshed and saw that the third saddle was missing, and then, with expert eyes, studied the ground for evidence. A trail, barely discernible in the multitude of hoof-marks, led through to the outer gate, crossed the road and struck straight east across the valley. "That's Abe," he said excitedly to himself. "That was made late yesterday." He stood erect and looked into the far reaches of the lower valley where the wreaths of mists in the hollows were turning to silver and those without shelter becoming dispelled as the sun spread its first warmth over the country. "You've stolen my horse!" he said aloud, and evenly, as though he were dispassionately charging some one before him with the misdeed. "You stole my horse, but she ... was your woman!" He straightened and lifted his head, moving it quickly from side to side as he strove to identify a moving object far below him that had risen suddenly into sight on one of the valley swells and disappeared again in a wash. It was a horse, he knew, but whether it was a roamer of the range or a beast bearing a rider, he could not tell. He waited anxiously for its reappearance, again hoping and fearing. "Huh! You're carryin' nobody," he muttered aloud as the speck again came into view. "An' you sure are goin' some particular place!" The animal was too far distant to be readily identified but about its swing was a familiar something and, inspired by an idea, Bayard returned to the house, emerged with a field glass and focused it on the approaching horse. The animal was his sorrel stallion.