He looked. Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone. He glanced hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the plain. “Sit down, don't move until I return,” he said quickly. “Take that.” He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the coach. It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste of its desertion! A light step behind him made him turn. It was Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in her hand. “How foolish of you--without a weapon,” she gasped in explanation. Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other! After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle--apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment--that it instinctively affected them alike. And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression! “It was so kind of them to leave the coach,” said Miss Cantire faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful eyes. “But what made them run away?” Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach. In that brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested the awful truth. Even the soft imprint of the Indians' moccasined feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the cavalrymen. It was these that first attracted Boyle's attention, but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released coach horses. Not so his companion! She was examining them more closely, and suddenly lifted her bright, animated face. “Look!” she said; “our men have been here, and have had a hand in this--whatever it is.” “Our men?” repeated Boyle blankly. “Yes!--troopers from the post--the escort I told you of. These are the prints of the regulation cavalry horseshoe--not of Foster's team, nor of Indian ponies, who never have any! Don't you see?” she went on eagerly; “our men have got wind of something and have galloped down here--along the ridge--see!” she went on, pointing to the hoof prints coming from the plain. “They've anticipated some Indian attack and secured everything.” “But if they were the same escort you spoke of, they must have known you were here, and have”--he was about to say “abandoned you,” but checked himself, remembering they were her father's soldiers.