Alton’s eyes grew a trifle keener, but he was shaken and weary, and made a little gesture which seemed to indicate that he would ask questions later.

“You’ll give the horse a light feed, and let me know when supper’s on,” he said.

It was dark when he mounted with Horton’s assistance, and the horse plunged once or twice.  Then it started at a gallop, and Alton had some difficulty in pulling it up, for the snow was beaten down and the trail was good.  He had not been gone half-an-hour when Seaforth, whose horse was smoking, swung himself down before the hotel.

“Where’s Harry?” he said.

“On the trail,” said Horton.  “I wanted to keep him, but he lit out a little while ago, and borrowed a rifle.  What he wanted it for I don’t know, but he wouldn’t be lonely, anyway.  One of the boys who was staying here pulled out for the railroad just before him.”

“Did you know the man?” asked Seaforth with unusual sharpness.

“No,” said Horton.  “He was timber-righting, but I’d a kind of fancy I’d once seen somebody very like him working round Somasco.”

Seaforth said nothing further, but swung himself into the saddle and rode off at a gallop.  He had been unsettled all day, and now it was with vague apprehensions he sent his heels home and shook the bridle.

In the meantime Alton was riding almost as fast, though the saddle galled him and he was stiff and aching.  His senses also grew a trifle lethargic under the frost, but he knew there would be little rest for him until he reached Vancouver, and strove to shake off his weakness.  The horse was, however, unusually restive, and would at times break into a gallop in spite of him where the trail was level, but Alton, who fancied there was something troubling the beast, was more than a little dubious of his ability to mount again if he got out of the saddle.  Until that day he had not ventured outside the ranch.

The shadowy pines flitted by him, here and there the moon shone down, and the drumming of hoofs rang muffled by the snow through a great silence which was curiously emphasized when twice a wolf howled.  Still, plunging and snorting now and then, the beast held pluckily on while the miles melted behind them, and midnight was past when Alton, turning, half-asleep, in his saddle, fancied he heard somebody riding behind him.  For a moment his fingers tightened on the bridle, but his hearing was dulled by weakness and the numbing cold, and pressing his heels home he rode on into the darkness.

It would probably have occurred to him at any other time that the beast responded with suspicious readiness, but his perceptions were not of the clearest just then, which was unfortunate, because the trail led downwards steeply through black darkness along the edge of a ravine.  The rain had also washed parts of it away, and no ray of moonlight pierced the vaulted roof of cedar-sprays.  The drumming of hoofs rolled along it, there was a hoarse growling far down in the darkness below, and Alton strove to rouse himself, knowing that a stumble might result in a plunge down the declivity.  He could dimly see the great trunks stream past him on the one hand, but there was only a gulf of shadow on the other.