At last Madeline was brought to a dead halt by Stewart and his horse blocking the trail.  Looking up, she saw they were at the head of a canyon that yawned beneath and widened its gray-walled, green-patched slopes down to a black forest of fir.  The drab monotony of the foothills made contrast below the forest, and away in the distance, rosy and smoky, lay the desert.  Retracting her gaze, Madeline saw pack-horses cross an open space a mile below, and she thought she saw the stag-hounds.  Stewart’s dark eyes searched the slopes high up along the craggy escarpments.  Then he put the black to the descent.

If there had been a trail left by the leading cowboys, Stewart did not follow it.  He led off to the right, zigzagging an intricate course through the roughest ground Madeline had ever ridden over.  He crashed through cedars, threaded a tortuous way among boulders, made his horse slide down slanting banks of soft earth, picked a slow and cautious progress across weathered slopes of loose rock.  Madeline followed, finding in this ride a tax on strength and judgment.  On an ordinary horse she never could have kept in Stewart’s trail.  It was dust and heat, a parching throat, that caused Madeline to think of time; and she was amazed to see the sun sloping to the west.  Stewart never stopped; he never looked back; he never spoke.  He must have heard the horse close behind him.  Madeline remembered Monty’s advice about drinking and eating as she rode along.  The worst of that rough travel came at the bottom of the canyon.  Dead cedars and brush and logs were easy to pass compared with the miles, it seemed, of loose boulders.  The horses slipped and stumbled.  Stewart proceeded here with exceeding care.  At last, when the canyon opened into a level forest of firs, the sun was setting red in the west.

Stewart quickened the gait of his horse.  After a mile or so of easy travel the ground again began to fall decidedly, sloping in numerous ridges, with draws between.  Soon night shadowed the deeper gullies.  Madeline was refreshed by the cooling of the air.

Stewart traveled slowly now.  The barks of coyotes seemed to startle him.  Often he stopped to listen.  And during one of those intervals the silence was broken by sharp rifle-shots.  Madeline could not tell whether they were near or far, to right or left, behind or before.  Evidently Stewart was both alarmed and baffled.  He dismounted.  He went cautiously forward to listen.  Madeline fancied she heard a cry, low and far away.  It was only that of a coyote, she convinced herself, yet it was so wailing, so human, that she shuddered.  Stewart came back.  He slipped the bridles of both horses, and he led them.  Every few paces he stopped to listen.  He changed his direction several times, and the last time he got among rough, rocky ridges.  The iron shoes of the horses cracked on the rocks.  That sound must have penetrated far into the forest.  It perturbed Stewart, for he searched for softer ground.  Meanwhile the shadows merged into darkness.  The stars shone.  The wind rose.  Madeline believed hours passed.