Читать книгу Nameless River онлайн

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At the point where she had left the pony the day before she dismounted and dropped his rein.

“You wait here, old nuisance,” she said darkly, rubbing his restless ears, “for I may have sudden need of you. If you see me come flying out with a streak of tawny fur behind me, don’t you dare break when I jump. So long.”

She took the bread and meat from the saddle and started on foot. It was not so far to the swirling pool and the cave behind the rock, and long before the sunlight had crept half way down the ragged stone wall at the western side of the cañon she had reached them. She went carefully, picking her way, eyes scanning each turn and boulder. At the pool’s edge she stood a long time, watching, listening, but there was nothing to be seen or heard.

She went to the mouth of the cave and peering in cautiously, called softly. She waited, but there was no answering growl, no whirlwind rush as she had half expected. The shallow cave was empty, save for some ashes of a dead fire and blankets. She circled the rock and began hunting for tracks in the white sand of the cañon bed—and presently she found them—small tracks of childish feet, set close beside the padded narrow prints of a dog—and they were going up the cañon, deeper into its fastnesses. She trailed them easily for a distance, then lost them in the foaming shallows of a riffle, and search as she would she could not find where they came out. There was a flat lip of rock on the other side, to be sure, but beyond that was sand again, and it lay clear, unruffled. Above the riffle was a long deep pool, swift and flowing, and she stood for a time contemplating it.