Sid made up his mind at once. It was necessary to get rid of the Indian runner, first, so that their movements could be made unwatched by the Navaho. He went to his tent and tore a fly leaf out of a small leather notebook in his tent wall pocket. He wrote a brief message that they were coming, rolled it small, and slipped it into an empty rifle cartridge. Corking it with a bit of pine, he returned to hand it to the runner. “You take, White Father Hinch,” he ordered. “Pronto! Savvy? You got meat and oats?” The Indian shook his head, pointing to the small bag of meal at his loin cloth. Sid cut him a flank from the buck, gave him a bag of oats and a handful of cartridges for a present, and sent him on his way. Then he saddled Pinto and rode toward the gulch, leaving Scotty and Big John still snoring in camp. He rode along the flanks of Buckskin, trying hard to remember the lay of the ravines, even though he had passed through them twice before. It was not easy. Several times he was sure he was lost, but each time some familiar tree or rock formation reassured him and he rode on. When he finally reached their ravine he was not sure of it, even then. Scraggly pinyons covered its rocky slopes, but there were dozens of others just like it, and there was absolutely nothing living to be seen in it. But, as for men or animals, what are they in Nature’s vast landscapes, where half a mile of verdure is tilted up as a mere wrinkle in one of her mountains! Buckskin was twenty miles long, a straight knife-edge as seen from across the canyon, cloud-covered, dim, and distant, as inaccessible to the traveling world as the North Pole, and it had hundreds of ravines like this. Sid halted his pony, looking down into the ravine with half a mind to push on further. Then a sort of break in the pinyons attracted his eye. That was not natural; something lay there! He rode over to it, and long before he reached it a great brown mass of fur appeared dimly, huddled up in a mass of tough, craggy trees that had been broken off like jackstraws. He dismounted and walked over to it with rifle at ready, for by no urging would Pinto come a step nearer. The brown mass did not move as he climbed through the crags toward it.