The mare had been trained to respond to the slightest touch on her mouth, and stopped instantly. Judith swayed slightly in the saddle with the heaving of the sweating horse. The blood beat at her temples, confusing what she actually heard with what her imagination pictured. She was half-way up a towering spur of the Wind River when she slid from the saddle, and putting her ear to the ground listened, Indian fashion. Above the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously, like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse’s hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail below became more distinct. The very desperation of her plight kept her clinging to the pommel, incapable of thought, so that when she finally flung herself to the saddle she was surprised to find herself there. To the left the trail dropped sharply to a precipice, choked by the close crowding of many scrub pines. To the right the snow-clad spires of the Wind River kept their eternal vigil. If she should call aloud for help, these white, still mountains would echo the anguish of her woman’s cry and give no further heed to her plight. The trail had begun to widen. The horse behind her again stumbled, loosening a stone that rolled with crashes and echoings down to the precipice below. She took advantage of the widening of the trail to urge Dolly forward. Her impulse was to put spurs to the mare and run, to take chances with loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility of Dolly’s stumbling and breaking a leg; but discretion prompted the showing of a brave front, the pleasantries of the road, with flight as the last resource of desperation. Suddenly gaining what seemed to be a plateau, she wheeled and waited the coming of this possible friend or foe. The thudding of hoofs through the inferno of darkness stopped, as the rider below considered the latest move of the horseman above. They were so near that Judith could hear the labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness of the night had become a tangible thing. The towering mountains were one piece with the gaping precipice, the trail, the scrub pines, the gauntlet on her hand. The horse below resumed its stumbling gait. Judith crowded Dolly close to the rocky wall. If the chance comrade of the wilderness should pass her by in the darkness—God speed him! “What the devil are you blocking the trail for?” sung out a voice from the darkness. At sound of it Judith’s heart stopped beating. The voice was Peter Hamilton’s. XI. The Cabin In The Valley