Behind him rose the cliffs, terrace above terrace of shattered porphyry, but already his pursuers were in the canyon below--four Texans and hard-riding Isham. He watched them from the rim as they went whipping down the trail, then settled back and waited grimly. Down the creek-bed they galloped, then up and over the point and down once more into the creek; but as they saw his horse grazing they wheeled and took cover, dropping off to reconnoiter on foot. For half an hour or more their heads bobbed up as they crept along the bank of the stream and then in disgust they strode down to the water and gathered about his horse. He smiled as he saw them cutting circles for sign--they were trying to find his tracks; but he had covered them too well and after hunting for several hours they came back and camped at Cold Spring. From his lookout among the crags Hall could hear their loud arguments, and their guesses at where he had gone; he could see their food, almost smell the can of coffee that they boiled over the mesquite coals; but still he lingered, eating acorns to stay his hunger, until at last they mounted and rode on. More than one had shrewdly guessed that he was around there somewhere, but the brush was so thick as to make pursuit hopeless and they were loath to work on foot. So they went away and left him, agreeing to ride the trail first, and Hall began to think about food. On the bench to which he had mounted the grass stood knee-high and there were deer and bear tracks everywhere, but one shot from his rifle would bring the Scarboroughs back so he prowled through the oaks after turkey. They were there by the hundred, fat gobblers who just escaped him and hens that ran like lightning through the brush; but as he pursued a brood of young ones he discovered a nest of eggs and the food question, for the moment, was solved. The eggs were still fresh, and, after eating one raw, he hastened back to his lookout. Already a feeling of security had come over him and as he waited for their return he worked busily on a turkey trap, which he planned to set at a spring. First he cut some long sticks, to make the top and sides, and then with limber switches he wattled them together, and at evening he took them down to the spring. It lay in the bottom of a brushy gulch and the turkey tracks led down to it everywhere. Cutting out a space above the spring he planted his wattled cage firmly; and then, digging a trench to lead the turkeys up and under it, he staked off the entrance inside. That was all it was, a fenced trench and a cage, but if any turkey strayed into it and lifted his head he would try, turkey-like, to find a hole between the slats instead of stooping down to pass out at the hole. Hall concealed the trap with brush and strewed acorns along the trench; and then, as no turkeys came, he built wings leading up to it and hid himself in the oak trees below.