To Bud that time of waiting was torment. He had faced danger and tragedy since he could toddle, and fear had never overridden the titillating sense of adventure. But then the danger had been for himself. Now terror conjured pictures whose horror set him trembling. Twenty-four hours and more had passed since he had kissed Marian's hand and let her go--to what? The inky blackness of those tunnelled caverns in the Gap confronted his mind like a nightmare. He could not speak of it--he dared not think of it, and yet he must. Jerry came on horseback, with three unlighted lanterns held in a cluster by their wire handles. Eddie immediately urged his horse into the brushy edge of the trail so that he might pass Bud and take the lead. “You sure made quick time,” he remarked approvingly to Jerry. “I raided Dave's cache of whiskey or I'd have been here quicker,” Jerry explained. “We might need some.” Bud gritted his teeth. “Ride, why don't yuh?” he urged Eddie harshly. “What the hell ails that horse of yours? You got him hobbled?” Eddie glanced back over his bobbing shoulder as his horse trotted along the blind trail through the brush. “This here ain't no race track,” he expostulated. “We'll make it quicker without no broken legs.” There was justice in his protest and Bud said nothing. But Sunfish's head bumped the tail of Eddie's horse many times during that ride. Once in the Gap, with a lighted lantern in his rein hand and his six-shooter in the other--because it was ticklish riding, in there with lights revealing them to anyone who might be coming through--he was content to go slowly, peering this way and that as he rode. Once Eddie halted and turned to speak to them. “I know Boise wouldn't leave the trail. If Sis had to duck off and hide from somebody, he'd come back to the trail. Loose, he'd do that. Sis and I used to explore around in here just for fun, and kept it for our secret till Lew found out. She always rode Boise. I'm dead sure he'd bring her out all right.” “She hasn't come out--yet. Go on,” said Bud, and Eddie rode forward obediently. Three hours it took them to search the various passages where Eddie thought it possible that Marian had turned aside. Bud saw that the trail through was safe as any such trail could be, and he wondered at the nerve and initiative of the girl and the boy who had explored the place and found where certain queer twists and turns would lead. Afterwards he learned that Marian was twelve and Eddie ten when first they had hidden there from Indians, and they had been five years in finding where every passage led. Also, in daytime the place was not so fearsome, since sunlight slanted down into many a passageway through the blow-holes high above. “She ain't here. I knew she wasn't,” Eddie announced when the final tunnel let them into the graying light of dawn beyond the Peak. “In that case--” Bud glanced from him to Jerry, who was blowing out his lantern.