"What is it!" called Slim, for he caught snatches of the rather excited talk of the boys. "Dick thought he saw one of the Del Pinzo gang," answered Bud. "Maybe he's the fellow I cracked on the head," suggested Snake. For they had lost sight of that individual in the mad rush into the canyon, and had not seen him when they turned back. "Say, wouldn't it be a good thing to capture him?" asked Bud eagerly. "We could make him tell where the others are, and where our cattle are hidden." "If we can get him," conceded Slim. "There he is again!" cried Dick. "Come on, fellows!" Disregarding, or forgetting the travel-weary horses, the ranch lad urged his own steed ahead at as rapid a pace as the animal could be induced to develop in a spurt. "Take it easy!" advised Nort to his brother, but he might as well have called to the wind, for Dick was off and away. "I don't see anything!" cried Bud, and though he had looked eagerly forward at Dick's call he had glimpsed neither hat nor face of any personage who might be suspected of being one of the Del Pinzo gang. But, even with that, Bud was not going to miss a chance to be in at the finish of whatever was about to happen, so he spurred his animal forward. "Come on, boys!" cried Slim to his comrades. "We can't let those youngsters tackle this game alone--'specially when if there's one of the rustlers there may be more. _Pronto_!" He galloped forward, as did the others, along the new trail that Bud had suggested taking. But Dick was in the lead, and, in a few seconds, was out of sight beyond an outcropping ledge of rock, which narrowed the trail at this particular point. "Watch your step there, boys!" cried Snake, as he saw What was likely to prove a bad turning. "I don't see how Dick got around it as he did, taking it at the gallop," he went on. And, as it happened, Dick had not exactly made it, for when Bud and Nort reached the dangerous turn, slightly after Dick had disappeared abound it, they saw no sight of their companion. "Pull up!" cried Bud sharply. "There's something wrong!" Nort was beginning to think so himself, and he hauled his steed back with such good will and energy that the animal was almost on its haunches. "Where in the world did he go?" cried Bud. Nort asked the same question, for there lay the narrow trail before them, running along a ledge, with a shelving bank of shale and sand on one side and a towering face of rock on the other. Snake Purdee raced at such speed around the turn, in spite of his own admonition to the boy ranchers, that the cowboy nearly ran down Bud and Nort. "Where's Dick?" cried Snake, at once aware that the stout lad was not in sight. "He's vamoosed--somewhere," said Bud. "Maybe he met-up with that Greaser and----" At that moment, however, there came a cry, unmistakably of distress, seemingly from some distance ahead and down below the high and narrow trail on which the party had come to a halt.