Slim and some of the more experienced cowboys studied the trail for several minutes. Surely it did seem to "peter out," as Yellin' Kid expressed it, though it had been fairly plain up to this point. "They couldn't get up on either side," declared Nort, looking at the steep, rocky walls which hemmed the trailers in right and left. "And they haven't gone on ahead, for there isn't a sign," added Dick, who had ridden up the defile for some little distance, returning to make his report. "Nothing short of an air ship could have lifted up a bunch of cattle from this gorge and set 'em down farther on." "Unless they went through a hole in one of the side walls," suggested Slim, "like that underground river you fellows discovered in the tunnel." "There are no side passages here," declared Bud. And he seemed to hold the correct view of it, the others agreeing, after a careful inspection of the rocky and shale-covered walls on either hand. "It looks just as if they came up to this point and--vanished!" "Pretty slick work--I'll give Del Pinzo credit for that," said Slim, as if it were already established that the wily Greaser halfbreed had made the descent on Happy Valley. "How he and his bunch could haze cattle this far into a rocky pass, an' then make 'em disappear, gets me!" "It shore do!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "But that doesn't change the fact that we're all switched around," declared Bud. "We're going north instead of south!" "Not so hard to account for that," said Snake. "This vale just naturally twists and turns like a windin' river. I wouldn't wonder but what we'd been going north other times, only you never noticed your compass, Bud." "Well, maybe so," admitted the boy rancher, rather dubiously. "But it looks as if we were back-trailing, instead of keeping on after those rascals." "We're keeping on all right!" asserted Slim. "By some hook or crook they've fooled us, but we haven't passed 'em, that's certain, and they must be somewhere up ahead. It would take Rocky Mountain goats to scramble up there," he added, motioning toward the steep walls of the gorge. "Some trick ponies might do it, but no cattle ever could, unless they're like some of them Swiss cheese brand I seen in pictures!" "Then do you think we should keep on?" asked Dick. "I shore do!" declared the foreman. "Forward march!" cried Bud, with a little laugh. "We want to get our cattle back, and catch the rustlers who took 'em!" And so, though all signs of the trail seemed to have vanished, they kept on. Night saw them in even a wilder region, though there was a spring of water--not boiling this time--and some grass for the animals. So it was decided to camp there and take up the search in the morning. They were in the enemy's country in every sense of the word, and could afford to take no chances. So after a fire had been built, and coffee made, bacon and flapjacks being the other items on the bill of fare, the men and boys were told off into watches.