The trail, striking the river bank, followed it up into a mountainous country--a metallic waste where few trees grew. There was a place still farther up in a very wild, broken country, where the river ran through a deep, narrow gorge, and the trail followed a narrow ledge part way up one of its precipitous sides. Anina's eyes sparkled with eagerness as she told of it. "There, my friend Ollie, we stop them. Many loose stones there are, and the path is very narrow." Mercer saw her plan at once. They could bar the men's passage somewhere along this rocky trail, and with stones drive them back. He realized with satisfaction that he could throw a stone fully twice as large and twice as far as any of the men, and thus, out of range, bombard them until they would be glad enough to turn back. His plan, then, was to land, and with Anina follow the men. The rest of the girls he would send back to me with the platform, to tell Miela and me to come over the next evening to the end of the trail. He and Anina meanwhile would keep close behind the men, and then when the cañon was neared, get around in front of them, and bar their farther advance. This would be easy since he could walk and run much faster than they, and Anina could fly. He would drive them back out of the gorge, send Anina to keep the appointment with me and bring me up to him with the girls and the platform. They reached the shore and landed within a few feet of where they had been an hour before. The men were not in sight; nothing remained to show they had been there, save pieces of cut cord lying about. Anina now instructed the girls what to tell me, and in a moment more, with the blanket and a few pieces of bread, she and Mercer were left standing alone on the rocky beach. Anina was cold. He took off his fur jacket and wrapped it about her shoulders. She made a quaint little picture standing there, with her two long braids of golden hair, and her blue-feathered wings which the jacket only partly covered. They started up the trail together. It was almost dark in the woods, but soon their eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, and they could see a little better. They walked as rapidly, as Anina was able, for the men had nearly an hour's start, and Mercer concluded they would be far ahead. They had gone perhaps a mile, climbing along over fallen logs, walking sometimes on the larger tree trunks lying prone--rude bridges by which the trail crossed some ravine--when Anina said: "I fly now. You wait here, Ollie, and I find where they are." She handed him the coat and flew up over the treetops, disappearing almost immediately in the darkness. Mercer slung the coat around him and sat down to wait. He sat there perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, staring up at the silent, motionless treetops, and thinking all sorts of vague, impossible dangers impending. Then he heard her wings flapping and saw her flitting down through the trees.