At length even wilder dreams of Lucy’s rare moments, when she let herself go, like a desert whirlwind, to envelop him in all her sweetness, could not avail to keep Slone patient.  He began to pace to and fro under the big tree.  He waited and waited.  What could have detained her?  Slone inwardly laughed at the idea that either Holley or Aunt Jane could keep his girl indoors when she wanted to come out to meet him.  Yet Lucy had always said something might prevent.  There was no reason for Slone to be concerned.  He was mistaking his thrills and excitement and love and disappointment for something in which there was no reality.  Yet he could not help it.  The longer he waited the more shadows glided beneath the cottonwoods, the more faint, nameless sounds he heard.

He waited long after he became convinced she would not come.  Upon his return through the grove he reached a point where the unreal and imaginative perceptions were suddenly and stunningly broken.  He did hear a step.  He kept on, as before, and in the deep shadow he turned.  He saw a man just faintly outlined.  One of the riders had been watching him—­had followed him!  Slone had always expected this.  So had Lucy.  And now it had happened.  But Lucy had been too clever.  She had not come.  She had found out or suspected the spy and she had outwitted him.  Slone had reason to be prouder of Lucy, and he went back to his cabin free from further anxiety.

Before he went to sleep, however, he heard the clatter of a number of horses in the lane.  He could tell they were tired horses.  Riders returning, he thought, and instantly corrected that, for riders seldom came in at night.  And then it occurred to him that it might be Bostil’s return.  But then it might be the Creeches.  Slone had an uneasy return of puzzling thoughts.  These, however, did not hinder drowsiness, and, deciding that the first thing in the morning he would trail the Creeches, just to see where they had gone, he fell asleep.

In the morning the bright, broad day, with its dispelling reality, made Slone regard himself differently.  Things that oppressed him in the dark of night vanished in the light of the sun.  Still, he was curious about the Creeches, and after he had done his morning’s work he strolled out to take up their trail.  It was not hard to follow in the lane, for no other horses had gone in that direction since the Creeches had left.

Once up on the wide, windy slope the reach and color and fragrance seemed to call to Slone irresistibly, and he fell to trailing these tracks just for the love of a skill long unused.  Half a mile out the road turned toward Durango.  But the Creeches did not continue on that road.  They entered the sage.  Instantly Slone became curious.

He followed the tracks to a pile of rocks where the Creeches had made a greasewood fire and had cooked a meal.  This was strange—­within a mile of the Ford, where Brackton and others would have housed them.  What was stranger was the fact that the trail started south from there and swung round toward the village.