“Now then,” he added, when the rope was well in hand, “we’ve wasted all the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance.  Come along.”

CHAPTER IV

CONGENIAL COMPANY

He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience.  Her eyes were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail.  For herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured—­really safe again and whole—­after that terrible plunge.  But this from the horseman was impossible.  He had not even thanked her for the rescue.

“You horrid, handsome wretch!” she murmured vexedly, stimulated to renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow way.

They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the horses.  The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring: 

“What for dit you did it—­go down there?”

“Just for ducks,” said Van.  He halted for Beth’s approach, put her up on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a promptness that was certainly amazing.

There was no understanding such a person.  Beth gave it up.  The whole affair was inexplicable—­his attitude towards Searle at the station, his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.

Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom, for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn.  His escape from death had been so slender—­and he would not even rest!

The flat was, in reality, the hog’s back or ridge of a lofty spur of the mountains.  Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits, in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.

After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down, lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a lake.

Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray floor with the keenest attention.  He went on further, and halted again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.

At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of immensity, but rather gazed at him.

“What is it you expect to see?” she inquired at last.  “Goldite isn’t down there, is it?”

“I’m rather expecting—­if I haven’t miscalculated on the time——­ There he is now,” he answered, still staring afar off down upon the valley.  He raised his arm and extended a finger to point towards the north-most limit of the level stretch of land.  “Do you see that small, dark object in the road?  That’s a road, that slender yellow streak that you can follow.”