O'Hara could not bring himself to put his automatic inside his jacket after that. He stuck to the trail of trampled snow, following it down the slopes of the mountain. Gradually the tracks seemed fresher, the snow less melted after it had been disturbed. He began to move more cautiously. He was passing through a defile, toward an opening in the rock beyond, when he first realized that he was being watched. How long this had been going on he could not guess, for the indication was not conclusive--a shower of loose rock slid down from above. When O'Hara looked up, he thought he saw a head disappearing into the overhanging brush. He halted instantly but there was no sound, nor did the head reappear. After a few seconds he realized the stupidity of remaining exposed in this narrow passage, a clay pigeon for whatever might be hiding on the ledges above him, and he began running. Once more small rocks came cascading down toward him, and this strange barrage continued, always just behind him, driving him along the trail of trampled snow through the defile. Whoever had preceded him had managed to get through, and O'Hara kept at it, breaking finally into the open--a sort of natural amphitheater. And there the trail ended. The footprints now diverged toward the walls of sheer rock, on which there was no snow to preserve them. "I was trapped," said O'Hara. "They had driven me into it as you might drive a hare. It was possible, of course, to get out of that bowl--for they had got out of it!--by climbing up those walls, thirty or more feet, but for that I'd want an Alpine guide, preferably with the rope to pull me up. I turned back instantly toward the defile and made a run for it." This time, when rock came down, it came in slabs. Nor was he able this time to detect any movement in the brush above. "I might have got through," said O'Hara. "They might have missed me. But they seemed a little too expert and I preferred to wait, well back from the sides of the bowl, with my automatic ready." They let him wait until after dusk. Then, very deliberately, a lighted flambeau was thrust out from behind a boulder high above him, definitely a test to see what he would do. He stayed where he was and did nothing. Other flambeaux now began appearing, neither advancing nor wavering, but fixing him in the center of their glare for a purpose not yet obvious. It was a game they played, O'Hara felt, a childish hanky-panky. But there had been nothing childish in those slabs of rock.