Swinging back again on the way he had come, Weir recrossed the creek and slowly retraced his course. Then with an exclamation of satisfaction he picked up the track where it turned up the canyon trail. But why was the man going to the Johnson ranch? Mystified by this baffling procedure on Sorenson's part, he nevertheless headed up the stream with no lessening of his purpose to overtake the other. At the ranch house, whose kitchen window was lighted, he stopped and leaped out. Johnson and Mary both answered his thumping knock. "Is Janet Hosmer here?" he questioned, while his eyes darted about the kitchen. Then he made his own reply, "I see she's not. Ed Sorenson kidnapped her to-night and drove to this canyon. Did you hear a car?" Mary faced her father. "You remember I thought I heard one!" she cried. "But the sound was so low I wasn't sure, and when I went to the window I saw nothing. I didn't hear it again. Father said it was just my imagination." "Where does this road lead?" "Up into the timber and to a 'park.' Used to be an old wood road. Sheepmen sometimes use it to take their wagons up above; sometimes cattle outfits too while on round-ups." "Could an auto go ahead on it?" "Yes, I guess so. By hard driving." "Then he's up there." Weir ran back to his car, jumped in. "Let me go with you," Johnson shouted after him. "No, I can handle the fellow," the engineer answered. And again his machine started on. "How long ago was it that you heard him, Mary?" was his parting question. "'Bout fifteen minutes ago," she cried. Fifteen minutes! But the girl's reckoning might be vague, and "fifteen" minutes be half an hour. At any rate, with the road ascending among the peaks Sorenson's speed would be greatly diminished. The incline would be against him, the uneven twisting rain-washed trail would require careful driving, the rain would hamper his sight. Yet the fellow he pursued could not be more than three or four miles ahead at most. On and on Weir pressed. The mist thickened; black wet tree trunks loomed before him like ghosts and sank out of view again; the road wound along the stream among rocks and bushes and over hillocks with all the difficult sinuosity of a serpent's track; in his ears persisted the chuckling talk of the creek, flowing in darkness except when lighted by his car's lamps as the machine plunged through a ford, as became more and more frequent with the ascent and the narrowing of the canyon. Five miles, ten miles, fifteen miles he must have come since leaving the ranch house. His car now was high in the mountain range, running on low gear, the engine working hard in the thin air and against the steep grade. He was not making more than five miles an hour, he judged, at this moment. The radiator was boiling and steaming like a cauldron. But he might be sure that if his travel was slow, Sorenson's was no better; the road was the same for the pursued as for the pursuer.