Night soon mantled the gorge in blackness thick as pitch.  Lucy could not tell whether her eyes were open or shut, so far as what she saw was concerned.  Her eyes seemed filled, however, with a thousand pictures of the wild and tortuous canyons and gorges through which she had ridden that day.  The ache in her limbs and the fever in her blood would not let her sleep.  It seemed that these were forever to be a part of her.  For twelve hours she had ridden and walked with scarce a thought of the nature of the wild country, yet once she lay down to rest her mind was an endless hurrying procession of pictures—­narrow red clefts choked with green growths—­yellow gorges and weathered slides—­dusty, treacherous divides connecting canyons—­jumbles of ruined cliffs and piles of shale—­miles and miles and endless winding miles yellow, low, beetling walls.  And through it all she had left a trail.

Next day Creech climbed out of that low-walled canyon, and Lucy saw a wild, rocky country cut by gorges, green and bare, or yellow and cedared.  The long, black-fringed line she had noticed the day before loomed closer; overhanging this crisscrossed region of canyons.  Every half-hour Creech would lead them downward and presently climb out again.  There were sand and hard ground and thick turf and acres and acres of bare rock where even a shod horse would not leave a track.

But the going was not so hard—­there was not so much travel on foot for Lucy—­and she finished that day in better condition than the first one.

Next day Creech proceeded with care and caution.  Many times he left the direct route, bidding Lucy wait for him, and he would ride to the rims of canyons or the tops of ridges of cedar forests, and from these vantage-points he would survey the country.  Lucy gathered after a while that he was apprehensive of what might be encountered, and particularly so of what might be feared in pursuit.  Lucy thought this strange, because it was out of the question for any one to be so soon on Creech’s trail.

These peculiar actions of Creech were more noticeable on the third day, and Lucy grew apprehensive herself.  She could not divine why.  But when Creech halted on a high crest that gave a sweeping vision of the broken table-land they had traversed Lucy made out for herself faint moving specks miles behind.

“I reckon you see thet,” said Creech

“Horses,” replied Lucy.

He nodded his head gloomily, and seemed pondering a serious question.

“Is some one trailing us?” asked Lucy, and she could not keep the tremor out of her voice.

“Wal, I should smile!  Fer two days—­an’ it sure beats me.  They’ve never had a sight of us.  But they keep comin’.”

“They!  Who?” she asked, swiftly.

“I hate to tell you, but I reckon I ought.  Thet’s Cordts an’ two of his gang.”

“Oh—­don’t tell me so!” cried Lucy, suddenly terrified.  Mention of Cordts had not always had power to frighten her, but this time she had a return of that shaking fear which had overcome her in the grove the night she was captured.