The Indian made one of his singular speaking sweeps of hand, and he scrutinized Shefford's face, but he received the news in silence. They turned a corner of wall, crossed a wide, shallow, boulder-strewn place in the brook, and mounted the bank to a thicket. Beyond this, from a clump of cottonwoods, Lassiter strode out with a gun in each hand. He had been hiding. “Shore I'm glad to see you,” he said, and the eyes that piercingly fixed on Shefford were now as keen as formerly they had been mild. “Gone! Lassiter--they're gone,” broke out Shefford. “Where's Fay--and Jane?” Lassiter called, and presently the women came out of the thick brake, and Fay bounded forward with her swift stride, while Jane followed with eager step and anxious face. Then they all surrounded Shefford. “It was Shadd--and his gang,” panted Shefford. “Eight in all. Three or four Piutes--the others outlaws. They lost track of us. Went below the place--where they shot at us. And they came up--on a bad slope.” Shefford described the slope and the deep chasm and how Shadd led up to the point where he saw his mistake and then how the catastrophe fell. “I shot--and missed,” repeated Shefford, with the sweat in beads on his pale face. “I missed Shadd. Maybe I hit the horse. He plunged--reared--fell back--a terrible fall--right upon that bunch of horses and men below.... In a horrible, wrestling, screaming tangle they slid over the rim! I don't know how many. I saw some men running along. I saw three other horses plunging. One slipped and went over. ... I have no idea how many, but Shadd and some of his gang went to destruction.” “Shore thet's fine!” said Lassiter. “But mebbe I won't get to use them guns, after all.” “Hardly on that gang,” laughed Shefford. “The two Piutes and what others escaped turned back. Maybe they'll meet a posse of Mormons--for of course the Mormons will track us, too--and come back to where Shadd lost his life. That's an awful place. Even the Piute got lost--couldn't follow Nas Ta Bega. It would take any pursuers some time to find how we got in here. I believe we need not fear further pursuit. Certainly not to-night or to-morrow. Then we'll be far down the cañon.” When Shefford concluded his earnest remarks the faces of Fay and Jane had lost the signs of suppressed dread. “Nas Ta Bega, make camp here,” said Shefford. “Water--wood--grass--why, this 's something like.... Fay, how's your arm?” “It hurts,” she replied, simply. “Come with me down to the brook and let me wash and bind it properly.” They went, and she sat upon a stone while he knelt beside her and untied his scarf from her arm. As the blood had hardened, it was necessary to slit her sleeve to the shoulder. Using his scarf, he washed the blood from the wound, and found it to be merely a cut, a groove, on the surface.