And now her brain had ceased to act like a strangely magical camera; now sights and sounds and faint odours about her were all unnoticed. Her eyes, wide and staring at the winding trail before her, did not see the broad trees or the flower sprinkled grass or the blossoming manzanita bushes. They gazed through these things which they did not see, and instead saw what might lie in the future, what fate the grim gods of destiny might mete out . . . to one man . . . if the revolver below the waterfall were found! Her hesitation was brief; the horror of what might lurk in the future was greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Again she urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself down just at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the white sand, wedged between two white stones, the revolver lay plainly visible. The noonday sun rested upon the deep water here and its secret was no secret at all. She was glad that she had come back. Snatching up the dead limb of a shrub lying close at hand, with little difficulty or waste of time, she dragged the weapon toward her until she could thrust her arm, elbow deep into the water, and secure it. She shuddered as when she had first forced her hand to touch it. But with quick, steady fingers she dried it against her skirt and thrust it into the only place where she could be sure of safety, where its voice would be silenced to all except her own heart, deep into the bosom of her waist. And again she was on Gypsy's back, again fleeing along the up-trail. As she rode, as the rush of air whipped in her face and the leaping body of the mare under her gave her muscles something to do, the blood flamed again into her cheeks; courage rushed back into a heart that was naturally unafraid. "I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herself accusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and I know, oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thing like that, he couldn't!" She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racing straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them. Off to her left, at the upper end of the valley where were a number of grazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of a couple of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn to them.