Then,
scrambling through a rocky labyrinth, impossible for hoof or wheel,
had made a short cut to the head waters of the Beaver. Now Blakely,
riding from the agency eastward slowly, should have found that Wingate
trail before the setting of the first day's sun, and his followers
could not have been far behind. It began to look as though the
Bugologist had never reached the road. It began to be whispered about
the post that Wren and his luckless companions might never be found at
all. Kate Sanders had ceased her song. She was now with Angela day and
night.
One hope, a vague one, remained beside that of hearing from the
baker's dozen that rode on Blakely's trail. Just as soon as Byrne
received the Indian story concerning Wren's disappearance, he sent
runners eastward on the track of Sanders's troop, with written advice
to that officer to drop anything he might be doing along the Black
Mesa and, turning northward, to make his way through a country
hitherto untrod by white man, between Baker's Butte at the south and
the Sunset Mountains at the north. He was ordered to scout the canon
of Chevlon's Fork, and to look for sign on every side until, somewhere
among the "tanks" in the solid rock about the mountain gateway known
as Sunset Pass, he should join hands with the survivors of Webb's
troop, nursing their wounded and guarding the new-made graves of their
dead.
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