While these thoughts were seething in his hot brain, he was climbing rapidly toward the cliff at the head of the gorge, across which, he knew, the man who was following the tracks that led to the cabin below, must come.

Gaining the end of the ledge that leads across the face of that mighty wall of rock, less than a hundred feet to the other side, he stopped.  There was no one in sight.  Looking down, he saw, a thousand feet below the tops of the trees in the bottom of the gorge.  Lifting his head, he looked carefully about, searching the mountainsides that slope steeply back from the rim of the narrow canyon.  He looked up at the frowning cliff that towered a thousand feet above his head.  He listened.  He was thinking, thinking.  The best of him and the worst of him struggled for supremacy.

A sound on the mountainside, above the gorge, and beyond the other end of the ledge, caught his ear.  With a quick step he moved behind a projecting corner of the cliff.  Rifle in hand, he waited.

Chapter XXXVIII

An Inevitable Conflict

When Aaron King set out to follow the tracks he had found at Granite Peak, after his long, hard trip along the rugged crest of the Galenas, his weariness was forgotten.  Eagerly, as if fresh and strong, but with careful eyes and every sense keenly alert, he went forward on the trail that he knew must lead him to Sibyl Andres.

He did not attempt to solve the problem of how the girl came there, nor did he pause to wonder about her companion.  He did not even ask himself if Sibyl were living or dead.  He thought of nothing; knew nothing; was conscious of nothing; but the trail that led away into the depths of the mountain wilderness.  Insensible to his own physical condition; without food; unacquainted with the wild country into which he was going; reckless of danger to himself but with all possible care and caution for the sake of the girl he loved, he went on.

Coming to the brink of the gorge in which the cabin was hidden, the trail, following the rim, soon led him to the ledge that lay across the face of the cliff at the head of the narrow canyon.  A moment, he paused, to search the vicinity with careful eyes, then started to cross.  As he set foot upon the ledge, a voice at the other end called sharply, “Stop.”

At the word, Aaron King halted.

A moment passed.  James Rutlidge stepped from behind the rocks at the other end of the ledge.  He was covering the artist with a rifle.

In a flash, the man on the trail understood.  The automobile, the mirror signals from Fairlands—­it was all explained by the presence and by the menacing attitude of the man who barred his way.  The artist’s hand moved toward the weapon that hung at his hip.

“Don’t do that,” said the man with the rifle.  “I can’t murder you in cold blood; but if you attempt to draw your gun, I’ll fire.”