With blacker gloom and deafening roar came the torrent of rain.  It was a cloud-burst.  It was like solid water tumbling down.  For long Madeline sat her horse, head bent to the pelting rain.  When its force lessened and she heard Stewart call for all to follow, she looked up to see that he was starting once more.  She shot a glimpse at Dorothy and as quickly glanced away.  Dorothy, who would not wear a hat suitable for inclement weather, nor one of the horrid yellow, sticky slickers, was a drenched and disheveled spectacle.  Madeline did not trust herself to look at the other girls.  It was enough to hear their lament.  So she turned her horse into Stewart’s trail.

Rain fell steadily.  The fury of the storm, however, had passed, and the roll of thunder diminished in volume.  The air had wonderfully cleared and was growing cool.  Madeline began to feel uncomfortably cold and wet.  Stewart was climbing faster than formerly, and she noted that Monty kept at her heels, pressing her on.  Time had been lost, and the camp-site was a long way off.  The stag-hounds began to lag and get footsore.  The sharp rocks of the trail were cruel to their feet.  Then, as Madeline began to tire, she noticed less and less around her.  The ascent grew rougher and steeper—­slow toil for panting horses.  The thinning rain grew colder, and sometimes a stronger whip of wind lashed stingingly in Madeline’s face.  Her horse climbed and climbed, and brush and sharp corners of stone everlastingly pulled and tore at her wet garments.  A gray gloom settled down around her.  Night was approaching.  Majesty heaved upward with a snort, the wet saddle creaked, and an even motion told Madeline she was on level ground.  She looked up to see looming crags and spires, like huge pipe-organs, dark at the base and growing light upward.  The rain had ceased, but the branches of fir-trees and juniper were water-soaked arms reaching out for her.  Through an opening between crags Madeline caught a momentary glimpse of the west.  Red sun-shafts shone through the murky, broken clouds.  The sun had set.

Stewart’s horse was on a jog-trot now, and Madeline left the trail more to Majesty than to her own choosing.  The shadows deepened, and the crags grew gloomy and spectral.  A cool wind moaned through the dark trees.  Coyotes, scenting the hounds, kept apace of them, and barked and howled off in the gloom.  But the tired hounds did not appear to notice.

As black night began to envelop her surroundings, Madeline marked that the fir-trees had given place to pine forest.  Suddenly a pin-point of light pierced the ebony blackness.  Like a solitary star in dark sky it twinkled and blinked.  She lost sight of it—­ found it again.  It grew larger.  Black tree-trunks crossed her line of vision.  The light was a fire.  She heard a cowboy song and the wild chorus of a pack of coyotes.  Drops of rain on the branches of trees glittered in the rays of the fire.  Stewart’s tall figure, with sombrero slouched down, was now and then outlined against a growing circle of light.  And by the aid of that light she saw him turn every moment or so to look back, probably to assure himself that she was close behind.