“That gets me,” was the reply. “It must have reached her some time before my arrival in the village, for she was doing the dead act when I got there. Of course, Holmes must have preceded me. We waited a couple of hours, if you will remember, on the top of the hill overlooking the valley.” “Well,” remarked Bart Angell, as he bit off a generous chew from his side of hardcut, “we might as well quit roominatin’ over ther case. What we got ter do is ter git on ther track of Holmes, and that aire mighty pronto.” “We can do nothing until morning,” said Henson despondingly. “You can’t trail anybody in the nighttime.” “That’s true as a general proposition,” said Buffalo Bill, “but in this case you’re off. The villain has a pony, and, of course, the animal was staked near the village. We can soon learn the direction of his flight. There are three ways of leaving the valley. One is toward the flat that we left behind this forenoon. The second is through the cañon at the other end of the village, a route that takes one to Colorado, and the third is toward the east through a narrow pass, and on to the plains.” The horses of the party were found; and the fact that they were where they had been left, near the trail leading to the lower end of the valley and the western hills, caused the king of scouts to believe that Holmes had not sought to escape by way of the flat and the ravine with the cave. “If he had come this way,” he said, “he would certainly have spotted the ponies and stampeded them. And I don’t think he took the trail at the other end. He wants to reach the plains, and the way to get there is by taking the eastern route.” “Then let’s investigate over that way first,” suggested Wild Bill, “and if you’re right, as I believe you are, we’ll be saving valuable time.” Buffalo Bill had correctly sized up the fleeing villain’s program. The tracks of a pony were found on the east less than a mile from the village. There were deep indentations in the soil, and the king of scouts, looking at the marks, rightly concluded that they were made by a pony that had carried double. “Holmes is a heavy man,” he remarked, “and Miss Wilton isn’t exactly a lightweight.” Sleep was out of the question. The trail was followed at night, though the progress was necessarily slow. In the hills, where there was but one way for a horse to take, they could make better time. It was daylight when they halted in a cañon, through which flowed a deep and rapid stream of water. They had breakfast, attended to the wants of their ponies, and then rode on. “Do you think Miss Wilton remained long in her deathlike sleep?” asked Carl Henson of Buffalo Bill, as the friends were riding, single file, up the steep side of the mountain. “If she revived before this, Holmes would have found her more troublesome on his hands than an elephant would have been. He’ll not try to get her out of her sleep.” “But the sleep must some time come to an end. When will that be? Have you any idea?”