“I saddled a hoss and went after them. They’d followed the wagon track to the top of the cliff. But I thought they’d took the river trail. When I got a piece along the road, I heard something go _bam_—a fall of rock, or something, down the cliff. I hurried my nag and come around a turn where I could see. I looked up—never thought to look ahead along the edge of Runaway River, I see her—Nell—looking over the edge of the cliff. “I see then I was follering the wrong lead,” pursued Tolley. “I didn’t think much about the slip I’d heard—not then. I wanted to get at Dick. So I turned back, got to the foot of the wagon track up the cliff yonder,” he pointed, “and hurried after them. “When I got up there neither of ’em was in sight. I hustled along the road and went clean past the fork of the Hoskins’ trail. Never thought of either of ’em going to that dump,” grumbled Tolley. “Well, I give it up after a while. I thought I’d lost too much time, starting out wrong at first as I had. They was too fast for me. So I rode back. It wasn’t till then, when I come to that place I’d seen Nell looking over from, that I saw how big a lump had broke off the edge of the Overhang.” Hurley sucked in his breath sharply. “Go on!” was all he said. “I looked down there. I seen how big the slide was. And I seen something more. There was something sticking out of that heap of stuff on the river bank. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was the hind parts of a hoss, only upside down. “I pushed my hoss along the river trail again and come to the heap of stuff that had come down the cliff. It hadn’t come down alone.” Hunt, listening as closely as Hurley, had no idea how his friend felt; but for his own part his flesh crawled at the inference he drew from Tolley’s tale. The man let his last words sink into their minds for fully a minute before he went on. “It hit me right where I lived. Something bad had happened. It hadn’t happened to the gal. So I figgered it must be Dick. “And I wasn’t mistook,” continued Tolley with a certain satisfaction in his tone. “I’d been right when I thought there was a hoss in that pile of gravel. There was—but not much of it stickin’ out. However, I clawed down to the saddle, undid it, and hauled it out. It was Dick’s all right. I got it now stuck into the bottom of my big safe.” “But where was Dick?” demanded Hurley. “How should _I_ know?” retorted the other. “Maybe under the heap—but I didn’t think so. I reckon he was throwed clean into the river. And you know what the current of Runaway River is!” Hurley groaned. “Wait!” said Hunt suddenly. “The man you call Dick might not have gone over the cliff with the horse. You did not see the accident.” “He didn’t come back to town. And he wouldn’t have gone on afoot to Hoskins or any place else,” Tolley said surlily. “Nobody ain’t seen him around yere from that day to this.” “And you lied about Dick and kept it under your hat all this time?” was Hurley’s comment.