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LAN'S departure from camp had anticipated by a round quarter hour the appearance on the upper trail of friends of the slain bandit, to the number of four or five, who had both discovered and recovered his body, called his death murder, and pledged themselves to its avengement, laying responsibility for the putative crime at the door of the man and woman to be seen in the cañon, immediately below the scene of Hopi Jim's fall.

Between the moment when discovery of the men on the ridge trail interrupted their hurried breakfast and that which found Rose and Barcus mounted on the back of their one horse and making the best of their way down the cañon in pursuit of Alan but little time had lapsed. But for the fact that no one could pass from the upper to the lower trail nothing could have saved them. The party on the heights offered abundant testimony of its intentions by wasting its ammunition in futile attempts at long-range marksmanship.

Even with its double burden, their horse made 209