Early in the evening the girl had shown no interest. Sitting back from the firelight, a shawl over her head, she seemed untouched by the anxiety that prompted the old man's restless rovings. As the night deepened Daddy John had come back to Courant who was near her. He spoke his fears low, for he did not want to worry her. Glancing to see if she had heard him, he was struck by the brooding expression of her face, white between the shawl folds. He nodded cheerily at her but her eyes showed no responsive gleam, dwelling on him wide and unseeing. As he moved away he heard her burst into sudden tears, such tears as she had shed at the Fort, and turning back with arms ready for her comforting, saw her throw herself against Courant's knees, her face buried in the folds of her shawl. He stood arrested, amazed not so much by the outburst as by the fact that it was to Courant she had turned and not to him. But when he spoke to her she drew the shawl tighter over her head and pressed her face against the mountain man's knees. Daddy John had no explanation of her conduct but that she had been secretly fearful about David and had turned for consolation to the human being nearest her.

The next day her anxiety was so sharp that she could not eat and the men grew accustomed to the sight of her mounted on the rock's summit, or walking slowly along the trail searching with untiring eyes. When alone with her lover he kissed and caressed her fears into abeyance. As he soothed her, clasped close against him, her terrors gradually subsided, sinking to a quiescence that came, not alone from his calm and practical reassurances, but from the power of his presence to drug her reason and banish all thoughts save those of him. He wanted her mind free of the dead man, wanted him eliminated from her imagination. The spiritual image of David must fade from her thoughts as his corporeal part would soon fade in the desiccating desert airs. Alone by the spring, held against Courant's side by an arm that trembled with a passion she still only half understood, she told him of her last interview with David. In an agony of self-accusation she whispered:

"Oh, Low, could he have killed himself?"

"Where?" said the man. "Haven't we searched every hole and corner of the place? He couldn't have hidden his own body."

The only evidence that some mishap had befallen David was Daddy John's, who, on the afternoon of the day of the disappearance had heard a cry, a single sound, long and wild. It had seemed to come from the crest of the rock, and the old man had listened and hearing no more had thought it the yell of some animal far on the mountains. This gave color to Courant's theory that the lost man had been seized by the Diggers. Borne away along the summit of the ridge he would have shouted to them and in that dry air the sound would have carried far. He could have been overpowered without difficulty, weakened by illness and carrying no arms.

They spent the morning in a fruitless search and in the afternoon Courant insisted on the train moving on. They cached provisions by the spring and scratched an arrow on the rock pointing their way, and underneath it the first letters of their names. It was useless, the leader said, to leave anything in the form of a letter. As soon as their dust was moving on the trail the Diggers would sweep down on the camp and carry away every scrap of rag and bone that was there. This was why he overrode Susan's plea to leave David's horse. Why present to the Indians a horse when they had only sufficient for themselves? She wrung her hands at the grewsome picture of David escaping and stealing back to find a deserted camp. But Courant was inexorable and the catching-up went forward with grim speed.