He looked at her quickly.

“Searle wouldn’t take my advice, you know.”  His eyes were once more merry.  “What could I do?”

“But Mr. Bostwick wouldn’t have gone if you had told him!” she said.  “Oh, I’m surprised you’d do it—­let him go and be captured like that!” She was looking down upon the silent drama intently as she added:  “I don’t see why you ever did it!”

He was still amused.

“Oh, I thought perhaps Searle deserved it.”

She blazed a little.

“You told him you hoped he’d meet congenial company on the road.  You didn’t mean——­”

“Guilty as charged in the indictment.  I guess I did.”

“Oh!  I wouldn’t have thought——­” she started, then she shivered in horror, reflecting swiftly on the fate that might have befallen herself and Elsa had they too been captured with Searle.  It was all explained at last—­the horseman’s earnest talk with Dave, his quiet but grim refusal to permit herself and Elsa to remain with the car, and the hazardous ride he had since dared compel them to take at such peril to his life!  And now, his persistent advance on foot, when perhaps he was painfully injured!  He had done then such a service as she could never in her life forget.  His treatment of Searle had perhaps, even as he said, been deserved.  Nevertheless, Searle was much to her, very much, indeed—­or had been—­up to this morning—­and she was worried.

“What do you think they will do?” she added in a spirit of contrition that came at once upon her.  “They must be terrible men!”

“They won’t do much but take his money and clothes, and maybe beg for a ride,” said Van reassuringly.  “They’ll see he isn’t fit to kill.”

Beth glanced at him briefly, inquiringly.  What a baffling light it was that played in the depths of his eyes!  What manner of being was he, after all?  She could not tell.  And yet she felt she could trust him—­she certainly knew not why.  Despite his ways of raillery she felt he was serious, true as steel, and big in heart and nature.

“I mustn’t forget to thank you,” she murmured.  “I mean for sparing us—­all that.  I do thank you, most sincerely, for——­”

“Never mind that,” he interrupted.  “We’re going to be late to lunch.”

He turned once more to the trail and started off, in his active manner, together with a thorough indifference as to what became of Bostwick.

Beth, with a feeling that something ought yet to be done for Searle, down in the valley with the convicts, cast one helpless glance at the scene of the hold-up, then perforce urged her pony forward.

Van halted no more.  He led the way doggedly onward, over the rises, through great silent forests, past crystal springs, and down dark, somber ravines.  At a quarter of one he emerged from a gorge upon the level acre of a tiny cove, still high in the mountains fastnesses.  Here he let out a whoop like an Indian, its echo filling all the place.