She was galloping along at a good clip when suddenly her horse shied at something.

“Whoa, Buster,” pacified Elaine.

But it was of no use.  Buster still reared up.

“Why, what is the matter?” she asked.  “What do you see?”

She looked down at the ground.  There was a spot of blood in the dust.  Buster was one of those horses to whom the sight of blood is terrifying.

Elaine pulled up beside the road.  There was a revolver lying in the grass.  She dismounted and picked it up.  No sooner had she looked at it than she discovered the initials “W.  J.” carved on the butt.

“Walter Jameson!” she exclaimed, realizing suddenly that it was mine.  “It’s been fired, too!”

Her eye fell again on the blood spots.  “Blood and—­footprints—­ into the brush! “she gasped in horror, following the trail.”  What could have happened to Walter?”

With the revolver, Elaine followed where the bushes were trampled down until she came to the place where I had been bound.  There she spied some pieces of paper lying on the ground and picked them up.

She put them together.  They were pieces of the envelope of the letter which we had decided to send to Washington.

“Which way did they take him?” she asked, looking all about but discovering no trail.

She was plainly at a loss what course to pursue.

“What would Craig do?” she asked herself.

Finding no answer, she stood thinking a moment, slowly tearing the envelope to pieces.  If she were to do anything at all, it must be done quickly.  Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her.  She threw the pieces of paper into the air and let them blow away.  It was unscientific detection, perhaps, but the wind actually took them and carried them in the direction in which the men had forced me to walk.

“That’s it!” cried Elaine to herself.  “I’ll follow that direction.”

. . . . . . .

Meanwhile, the men had hurried me off along a trail that led to the foot of a cliff.  Then the trail wound up the cliff.  We climbed it until we reached the top.

There in the rock was a rude stairway.  I drew back.  But one man drew a gun and the other preceded me down.  Along the steep stone steps cut out in the face of the rock, they forced me.

Below, in a rift in the very wall of the cliff, was a cave in which already were two more of Del Mar’s men, talking in low tones, in the dim light.

As we made our way down the breakneck stairway, the foremost of my captors stepped on a large flat rock.  As he did so, it gave way slightly under his foot.

A light in the cave flashed up.  Under the rock was a secret electric connection which operated a lamp.

“Some one coming,” muttered the two men, on guard instantly.

It was a somewhat precarious footing as we descended and for the moment I was more concerned for my safety from a fall than anything else.  Once my foot did slip and a shower of pebbles and small pieces of rock started down the face of the cliff.