Page:The Girl from Hollywood.djvu/16

12 They guided their horses around a large, flat slab of that some camper had contrived into a table beneath the sycamore, and started across the trail toward the posite side of the cafion. They were in the middle of the trail when the man drew in and listened.

“Some one is coming,” he said. “Let’s wait and see who it is. I haven’t sent any one back into the hills to-day.”

“T have an idea,” remarked the girl, “that there is more going on up there’—she nodded toward the mountains stretching to the south of them—‘“than you know about.”

“How is that?” he asked.

“So often recently we have heard horsemen passing the ranch late at night. If they weren’t going to stop at your place, those who rode up the trail must have been headed into the high hills; but I’m sure that those whom we heard coming down weren’t coming from the Rancho del Ganado.”

“No,” he said, “not late at night—or not often, at any

e.

The footsteps of a cantering horse drew rapidly closer, and presently the animal and its rider came into view around a turn in the trail. .

“It’s only Allen,” said the girl.

The newcomer reined in at sight of the man and the girl. He was evidently surprised, and the girl thought that he seemed ill at ease.

“Just givin’ Baldy a work-out,” he explained. “He ain’t been out for three or four days, an’ you told me to work ’em out if I had time.”

Custer Pennington nodded.

“See any stock back there?”

“No. How’s the Apache to-day—forgin’ as bad as usual ?””

Pennington shook his head negatively.

“That fellow shod him yesterday just the way I want him shod. I wish you’d take a good look at his shoes, Slick, so you can see that he’s always shod this same way.”

Google sini �