"I'm off to fill the larder. Stick close until I come back. If I'm long gone it will be because I can't help it. But be sure I'll be back all right and bring something to eat. Jim." He left her, not without uneasiness, but eager to hurry away so that, if all went well, his return might be hastened. He took the rifle and slipped cautiously through the bushes, stopping to make what assurance he could that he was not being seen, crawling for the most part across the open places, keeping as much as possible where boulders or trees hid him. He had already made his tentative plans; he made his way down into the bed of the ravine and thence upstream. Swiftly the light increased over the still solitudes. The sun was up on the highlands, the cañons only were still dusky. He found a place where he could stand hidden and see the cliff-broken slope where Betty was. Here he stood motionless for a long time, watching. For he knew that if by chance someone had seen him and had not followed it was because that someone had elected rather to seek the girl. At last, when the stillness remained unbroken and he saw no stirring thing, he expressed his relief in a deep sigh and went on. His plan was to work his way up the ravine until at last he topped the ridge and went down on the further side. From his starting place he had roughly picked out his way, shaping his trail to conform to those bits of timber which would aid in his concealment. Once over the ridge he would press on until several miles lay between him and Betty. Then, if he saw game of any sort or a straying calf or sheep, he would have to take the chance that a rifle shot entailed. If his shot brought Zoraida's men down on him, he would have to fight for it or run for it as circumstances directed. He was an hour in cresting the first ridge. Before him lay a wild country, broken and barren in places where there were wildernesses of rock and thorny bush; in other places scantily timbered and grown up in tough grasses. A more unlikely game country he thought that he had never seen. But the land hereabouts was not utterly devoid of water and always, as he went on, he sought those cañons where from a distance he judged that he might come to a spring. Even so he was parched with thirst before he found the first mudhole. And before he drew near enough to drink he sat many minutes screened by some dusty willows, his eye keen either for watering game or for Zoraida's hirelings who would be watching the waterholes. But, when at last he came on, he found nothing but a jumble of tracks. Ponies had watered here and had trampled the spring into its present resemblance to a mudhole. He found a place to drink, and drank thirstily, finding no fault with the alkali water or the sediment in it. He washed his hands and face in it, wet his hair and went on.