It was not over an hour later when they set their feet in a trail which they were confident Mexicali Joe had followed; from the moment they stepped into the trail they watched for some trace of him, but the hard, rain-washed, rocky way which only a mountaineer could have recognized as a trail, was such as to hold scant sign, if the one who travelled it but exercised precaution. Babe Deveril, with his small knowledge of these mountains, held it the old short-cut trail from Timkin's Bar, long disused, since Timkin's Bar itself had a score of years ago died the death of short-lived mining towns. Brush grew over it, and again and again it vanished underfoot, and they were hard beset to grope forward to it again. Yet trail of a sort it was, and it set them to meditating: Timkin's Bar, in the late '80's, had created a gold furor, and then, after its short and hectic life, had been abandoned, as an orange, sucked dry by a child, is thrown aside. Was it possible that among the old diggings Mexicali Joe had stumbled upon a vein which the old-timers had overlooked? At any rate, the trail lured them along, winding in their own general direction; and Mexicali Joe still fled ahead. Of this latter fact they had evidence when they came to the unmistakable sign ... to watchful eyes ... of his recent passing: here, on the steep, ill-defined trail he had slipped, and had caught at the branches of a wild cherry. They saw the furrow made by his boot-heel and the scattered leaves and broken twigs. Gradually the trail led them up out of the cañon-bed, snaking along the flank of the mountain. And gradually they were entering the great forest land of yellow pines. If not already in Timber-Wolf's country, here was the border-line of his monster holdings: few men could draw the line exactly between the wide-reaching acres which were his and those contiguous acres which were a portion of the government reserve. Standing himself had quarrelled with the government upon the matter and what was more, after no end of litigation, had won a point or two. Once they diverged from the trail to climb and slide to the bottom of the cañon for a long drink. But this and the sheer ascent took them in their hurry only a few minutes. Again they took up the trail. It was high noon and they were tired. But, alike disdainful of fatigue, driven and lured, they pressed on. Suddenly she startled him by catching him by the arm and whispering warningly: "Sh! Some one is following us!" In another moment, drawing back from the trail, they were hidden among the wild cherries in a little side ravine. "Where?" he demanded, his voice hushed like hers, as he peered back along the way they had come. "Who? How many of them?" "I didn't see," she answered. "What did you hear?" "Nothing ... I just know ... I _felt_ that some one was trailing us just as we are trailing Mexicali Joe! I feel it now; I know!" "But you had something--something that you saw or heard--to tell you?"