"Fine. This is nothing." "If I hadn't forgotten my hat ... among other things," he chuckled, "I'd take it off to you right now, Lynette Brooke!" They paused and stood a moment in the gloom about the base of a big boulder, listening. Now and then a man shouted; dogs still barked. But the sounds were appreciably fainter, now that they had started down the steeply pitching slope into the ravine. "We can get away from them to-night," she said. "But to-morrow, when it is light?" "We'll see. For one thing, a chase like this always loses some of its fine enthusiasm after the first spurt. For another, even if they did pick us up to-morrow, they would have had time to cool off a bit; a mob can't stay hot overnight. But give us a full night's head-start, and I've a notion we've seen the last of them. Ready?" "Always ready!" Again they hurried on, straight down into the great cleft through the mountains, swerving into brief détours only for upheaved piles of boulders or for an occasional brushy tangle. In twenty minutes they were down in the bed of the ravine, and splashing through a little trickle of water; Lynette stooped and drank, while Deveril stood listening; again, climbing now, they went on. The farther side of the cañon was as steep as the one they had come down, and it was tedious labor in the dark to make their way; at times they zigzagged one way and another to lessen the sheerness of their path. And frequently now they stopped and drank deep draughts of the clear mountain air. Silence shut down about them, ruffled only by the soft wind stirring across the mountain ridges. It was not that they were so soon out of ear-shot of Big Pine; rather, this sudden lull meant that their pursuers, done with the first moments of blind excitement, were now gathering their wits and thinking coolly ... and planning. They would be taking to horseback soon; scouting this way and that, organizing and throwing out their lines like a great net. By now some one man, perhaps Young Gallup, had taken charge and was directing them. The two fugitives, senses sharpened, understood, and again hastened on. They had not won to any degree of security, and felt with quickened nerves the full menace of this new, sinister silence. Onward and upward they labored, until at last they gained a less steeply sloping timber belt, which stretched close under the peak of the ridge. They walked more swiftly now; breathing was easier; there were more and wider open spaces among the larger, more generously spaced tree trunks. "We'll strike into the Buck Valley road in a minute now," said Deveril. "Then we'll have easy going...." "And will leave tracks that they'll see in the morning!" "Of course. Any fool ought to have thought of that," he muttered, ashamed that it had been she instead of himself who had foreseen the danger.