“Nothing, of course, Senor,” he replied.

But Rhoda was not daunted.

“Who were they?” she repeated.  “What did they say?  Where did they go?”

The herder glanced at Rhoda and shook his head.

“Quien sabe?”

Rhoda turned to Kut-le in anger.

“Don’t be more brutal than you have to be!” she cried.  “What harm can it do for this man to give me word of my friends?”

Kut-le’s eyes softened.

“Answer the senorita’s questions, amigo,” he said.

The Mexican began eagerly.

“There were three.  They rode up the trail one day ago.  They called the dark man Porter, the big blue-eyed one DeWitt, and the yellow-haired one Newman.”

Rhoda clasped her hands with a little murmur of relief.

“The blue-eyed one acted as if locoed.  They cursed much at a name, Kut-le.  But otherwise they talked little.  They went that way,” pointing back over the trail.  “They had found a scarf with a stone tied in it—­”

“What’s that?” interrupted Kut-le sharply.

Rhoda’s eyes shone in the firelight.

“‘Not an overturned pebble escapes his eye,’” she said serenely.

“Bully for you!” exclaimed Kut-le, smiling at Rhoda in understanding.  “However, I guess we will move on, having gleaned this interesting news!”

He remounted his little party.  Rhoda reeled a little but she made no protest.  As they took to the trail again the sheep-herder stood by the fire, watching, and Rhoda called to him: 

“If you see them again tell them that I’m all right but that they must hurry!”

Rhoda felt new life in her veins after the meeting with the sheep-herder and finished the night’s trail in better shape than she had done before.  Yet not the next day nor for many days did they sight pursuers.  With ingenuity that seemed diabolical, Kut-le laid his course.  He seldom moved hurriedly.  Indeed, except for the fact that the traveling was done by night, the expedition had every aspect of unlimited leisure.

As the days passed, Rhoda forced herself to the calm of desperation.  Slowly she realized that she was in the hands of the masters of the art of flight, an art that the very cruelty of the country abetted.  But to her utter astonishment her delirium of physical misery began to lift.  Saddle stiffness after the first two weeks left her.  Though Kut-le still fastened her to the saddle by the waist strap and rested her for a short time every hour or so during the night’s ride, the hours in the saddle ceased to tax her strength.  She was surprised to find that she could eat—­eat the wretched cooking of the squaws!

At last she laid out a definite course for herself.  Every night on the trail and at every camp she tried to leave some mark for the whites—­a scratch on pebble or stone, a bit of marked yucca or a twisted cat’s-claw.  She ceased entirely to speak to Kut-le, treating him with a contemptuous silence that was torture to the Indian though he gave no outward sign.