A little farther on they found many deep impressions of the child's feet close together, as if he had been jumping, and after that the coyote tracks disappeared. "He must have jumped at them and shouted and thrust out his stick," said Mead, "and frightened them away. He might have done that after he found he could drive them back. And this was probably after daybreak, when they would be less likely to follow him. We can't be so very far behind him now, for he would be tired and could not walk fast." "Come, hurry! Let us go on!" urged Marguerite, He looked at her doubtfully. Her face was drawn and white under her sunbonnet, notwithstanding her long walk in the hot sun, and dark rings circled her eyes. "Have you strength to go farther? Hadn't you better wait here?" "No, no! I can go on! Come, let's hurry!" and she moved forward. "Then lean on my arm. That will help you some." "No, thank you. I might keep you back. You go on and follow the trail as fast as you can and I will come behind. Don't stop a minute for me." The trail left the arroyo and climbed the hill again and from its summit they could see the crowd of people far toward the north scattering out over the mesa and dotting the hills beyond the mountain road. A banner of smoke lay low against the northern horizon, while across the distance came the faint whistle of an approaching train. A vague remembrance came into Marguerite's mind that there was to have been trouble in the town, a battle and bloodshed, after the passing of that train, and that she had been anxious on her father's account. But that all seemed years ago, and the remembrance of it quickly passed. The trail wandered on, keeping to the hilltops for some time. Mead told Marguerite that the boy had been cold in the early morning and had stayed on the hilltops because it was warmer there when the sun first rose. Then the trail went up and down again, sometimes over the hills and sometimes following the arroyos, sometimes turning on itself and going back, and sometimes circling about in long curves, facing by turns all points of the compass. Along arroyos, and on hillsides that were comparatively barren and sandy it was easily followed. At other times Mead lost it entirely and they would wander about, searching the ground closely. Once Marguerite found the faint track of the shoe when Mead was going away in another direction, and she called him back delightedly. For long distances he would spring rapidly along a trail so faint that it was only by close scrutiny she could see anything, his mind unconsciously marking the distance from one trace to where the next should be, his eye skimming the ground and his quick sight catching the crushed flower stem, the sunken pebble, the broken blade of grass, the tiny depression of heel or toe that marked the way.