On the lower mesa the Mexican picked up the galloping dot again, holding it in view until it halted on the river bank a hundred yards below the entrance to the canyon.  Since the water was low in the ford, the river bank hid the crossing, and the Mexican drew rein and waited for the dot to reappear on the opposite shore.

A slow minute was lost; then a second and a third.  The man in the corded sombrero and laced buckskins touched his horse’s flank with a spur and crept forward at a walk, keeping his eyes fixed upon the point where the quarry ought to come in sight again.  When three more minutes passed and the farther shore was still a deserted blank, the Mexican dug both rowels into his mustang and galloped down to the river, muttering curses in the patois of his native Sonora.

Apparently the closing in had been delayed too long.  There were fresh hoof-prints in the marl of the hither approach to the shallow ford, but none to match them on the farther side.  The Mexican crossed hastily and searched for the outcoming hoof-marks.  The rocky bar which formed the northern bank of the stream told him nothing.

Now it is only in the imagination of the word-smith that the villain in the play is gifted with supernatural powers of discernment.  Ruiz Gregorio Maria y Alvarez Mattacheco, familiarly and less cumbrously known as “Mexican George,” was a mere murderer, with a quick eye for gun-sights and a ready and itching trigger finger.  But he was no Vidoeq, to know by instinct which of the two trails, the canyon passage or the longer route over the hills, Ford had chosen.

Having two guesses he made the wrong one first, urging his mustang toward the canyon trail.  A stumbling half-mile up the narrow cleft of the river’s path revealing nothing, he began to reconsider.  Drawing a second blank of the same dimensions, he turned back to the ford and tried the hill trail.  At the end of the first hundred yards on the new scent he came again upon the fresh hoof-prints, and took off the brow-cramping hat to swear the easier.

Two courses were now open to him; to press hard upon the roundabout hill trail in the hope of overtaking the engineer before he could reach the Horse Creek camp, or to pass by the shorter route to the upper ford to head him off at the river crossing.  The Mexican gave another glance at the dull red spot in the western sky and played for safety.  The waylaying alternative commended itself on several counts.  The canyon trail was the shorter and it could be traversed leisurely and in daylight.  Pressing his livery hack as he could, Ford would scarcely reach the crossing at the mouth of Horse Creek before dusk.  Moreover, it would be easier to wait and to smoke than to chase the quarry over the hills, wearing one’s pinto to the bone.

Ruiz Gregorio Maria set his horse once more at the task of picking a path among the canyon boulders, riding loosely in the saddle, first in one stirrup and then in the other, and smoking an unbroken succession of the corn-husk cigarettes.