“Some of us will.”  The sheriff was inclined to believe her, and yet he was still suspicious.  A rock chamber in the Mont d’Or!  That certainly accounted for the miraculous escape of last winter.

“Pedro?” he asked.  “Are you sure it ain’t Jose?”

“I ain’t heard of any Jose, have you Marthy?” asked Mrs. Nitschkan innocently.  “Pedro was his name.  But come on quick.”

“Two of you boys search this cabin and the woods around,” ordered the sheriff, “and two of you go up to Seagreave’s cabin.  The rest come along with me.”

Led by Mrs. Nitschkan, still volubly lamenting her loss, they started down the hill toward the ravine, when the sheriff suddenly looked up to see upon the crest of the hill just before it dipped into a descending slope two horsemen at full gallop, both horses and riders outlined against the sky.

“Our men are up there, boys,” he cried.  “Quick.  I’ve got the fastest horse in the county, and we’ll get them before they get to three rocks.”

He was back to his horse again and on it and up the hill before his men were fairly in the saddle.  It was a race after that, and so rapidly did he gain on Gallito and Jose that it looked as if his prediction of getting them before they reached three rocks was about to be verified.  “I must do it, I must do it,” he kept muttering to himself, “for it’s bad going after that, and it’ll take us all some time to find him.”

He was lessening the distance between them with every long, powerful stride of his horse, but already the three rocks, gaunt and high, loomed before him as if forming an impassable barrier across the road.  Suddenly, just as Jose and Gallito had almost reached them and the sheriff was gaining upon the fugitives in great leaps, he saw them swerve their horses aside and dash into a clump of trees to the right of the rocks.

“Oh, the fools! the fools!  I got ’em now.  Instead of going for the rocks, they’ve made for the trees.”

A few minutes later he and his men found the horses ridden by Gallito and Jose blown and hard-breathing among the trees, but no trace could they discover of the men they sought.  Beyond the three rocks the character of the hills changed strikingly.  Instead of the wide, undulating, wooded plateau, over which riding was so easy, the mountains suddenly seemed split by mighty gashes, a great pocket of crevasses and towering cliffs.

The sheriff and his men beat about aimlessly and conscientiously for several hours, but in vain.  Jose and Gallito had long before “hit” the secret trail.  So finally the sheriff, who was inclined to put less faith than ever in Hanson’s representations, and convinced in his own mind that Gallito was merely conniving at the escape of an unregenerate brother, and that Mrs. Nitschkan’s tale was true, called off his men and rode home.  “The cuss ain’t important,” he remarked, “and I guess Gallito’ll be glad enough to make up Nitschkan’s loss to her and keep her mouth shut.”