They knew that Sanchia was going for her horse. Here was no time for one to allow his way to be cluttered up with trifles. Howard turned and ran to his own horse. They lost sight of him in the dark; they heard pounding hoofs as he raced after Sanchia and by her; they heard her scream out angrily at him as she was the first to grasp his purpose. And presently at the cabin door was Howard again, calling to Helen. She ran out. He was mounted and led two horses, her own and Sanchia's white mare.
'Hurry!' he called. 'We'll play my hunch and beat her to it yet.'
Helen understood and scrambled wildly into her own saddle. She heard Sanchia calling; she could even hear the woman running back toward them. Then her horse jumped under her, she clutched at the horn of her saddle to save herself from falling, and she and Howard were racing up trail, Sanchia's mare led after them, Sanchia's voice screaming behind them.
They skirted the base of the cliffs for half a mile. Then Howard turned Sanchia's horse loose, driving the animal down into a dark ravine where there would be no finding it in the night-time.
'It's only a chance,' he said, 'but then that's better than just sitting and sucking our thumbs. We take the up-trail here.'
They came out upon the tablelands above Bear Valley. There was better light here; the trail was less narrow and steep; they could look down and see the light in the cabin.
Later they were to know just what had been Sanchia Murray's quick reply to their move. And then they were to know, too, where Jim Courtot's hang-out had been during these last weeks in which he had seemed to vanish. Sanchia, with a golden labour before her, had promptly turned to her 'right hand.' On foot, since there was no other way, and running until she was breathless and spent, she hurried across the narrow valley, climbed the low hills at its eastern edge, and plunged down into the ravine which was the head of Dry Gulch. Up the farther side she clambered, again running, panting and sobbing with the exertion she put upon herself, until she came to another broken cliff-ridge. There she had stood calling. And, from a hidden hole in the rocks, giving entrance to a cave, like a wolf from its lair, there had come at her calling Jim Courtot.