An hour before he had assured Jane Lauderdale that his steer, as well as he, was at her service. Now that vicarious promise had been redeemed—the beef-brute sure had served her! The opposition party, probably with the stolen cryptogram in hand, had decided on this particular butte top as the likeliest location of treasure buried by eccentric grand-sires and were getting underway some larger scheme of excavation. And he, in pursuit of his too-live-stock, was started on another pursuit of Swinton Welch and his crew. Pape felt keen to turn in deed, as well as thought. Despite the red’s service rendered, he breathed a prayer that something would happen to the beast—anything drastic enough to end his career as pace setter to the queerest of questioners. Answer to this prayer came with the unexpectedness which all afternoon had been marked—an answer decisive as the bluff-edge ahead. In his head-down rush the excited animal had not seen until too late the precipice that marked trail’s end. With a conclusive back flop in midair, he disappeared. Hot on his hoofs, just out of rope reach, pounded Polkadot. But he, with super-instinct, sensed the drop in time to swerve on the shale of the brink. Frantically he then began a struggle to overcome its shift. A lake lapped the bottom of the void—one of the several that add their quiet blues and rippling whites to the color scheme of the park and of a Sunday furnish exercise for as many enthusiastic “crab-catchers” as there are flat-bottomed row boats to rent. Pape saw it from cliff’s edge. He did not shiver—time for that if they went down. Flinging from the saddle, he spread his length upon the ground, digging in with toes and elbows to increase the weight of the drag made by his body. As determined to save his equine pal as himself, he threw all the strength of his arms into a steady pull upon the reins. CHAPTER XXIII—THE MAN BEHIND Pape’s ride down from the height of No-Man’s Land was rapid as his advisedly devious course would allow—rapid from his desire to communicate his steer-led discovery to Jane Lauderdale with the least possible delay and devious for two reasons. He did not wish to attract the attention of the treasure blasters until after the girl had looked them over. And he did not wish to fall into the hands of the police who had hauled his run-amuck escutcheon out of the lake and taken him in charge. On reaching the meadow where he had asked his quondam pursuit pardners to await him, he could sight none of them. He concluded that they had cut for the nearest bridle path to avoid any such accounting to the park authorities as had been exacted after last evening’s irregularities. Stansbury caution advised that he do likewise, but the Pape habit of riding rough-shod by the short-cut trail overruled.