Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/238

220 became rapidly more broken and rocky, so that the scout, trained tracker that he was, was forced to exert his powers to the utmost. Towards evening, among the rock-hills and ridges, the trail disappeared entirely, and that night the two camped on the bank of a tiny creek. Morning found them again at work seeking to pick up the lost trail. But their efforts went for naught, and for several days the two searched unceasingly among the ridges and rock-crags of the western shore. Here and there, the scout was able to point out where the strange woman had crossed a creek, or descended to the shore of the lake. But always the trail would return to lose itself among the rocks. Several times also he found evidence of the presence of the man who had visited the cabin after its owner's hasty departure. But this trail, too, was lost among the rocks.

Upon the evening of the fourth day as they were returning to their camp beside the little creek, both halted abruptly and stared wide-eyed toward the sky line of a naked ridge which terminated abruptly in a sheer drop of a hundred feet to the cold black waters of Red Tail Lake. For an instant there appeared, running swiftly upon the very summit of the ridge, the figure of a woman. Clean-cut and