“Gone!”

This was the one word which burst from Dave’s lips as he searched one pocket after another in rapid succession. Then he arose to his feet, to hurry up and down the trail in the vicinity where the encounter with Jasniff had occurred. But though he looked everywhere, not a trace of the documents, the letters, or his pocketbook could be found.

An examination showed that his coat was torn in several places and that the side of one of the pockets had likewise been rent. But whether this damage had been caused by the fight or when he had rolled down over the rocks, he could not determine.

“I guess I got pretty well mussed up in the fight, and the fall down the rocks finished the job,” he muttered to himself.

He was much disheartened, and felt bitter against Nick Jasniff. Whether the rascal had picked up the articles lost and made off with them was, however, a question.

78“If I lost them up here on the trail he probably took them,” Dave reasoned. “But if they fell out of my pockets when I rolled down the rocks and over the cliff, they must be scattered somewhere between here and the place where I landed in the bushes.”

Dave felt much perplexed, not knowing whether it would be better to try to find Jasniff or to make a search in the vicinity where he had had the fall.

“I suppose it would be sheer nonsense to try to follow Jasniff on foot if he went off on my horse,” the young civil engineer reasoned. “I might as well take a look down below and make sure that I didn’t drop those things when I fell.”

With his hurt shoulder and lame ankle, it was almost as much of a task to get down the rocks as it had been to climb up. As well as he was able, he took the same course he had followed in the fall, and he kept his eyes wide open for the things he had lost. But five minutes of slipping and sliding brought him to the top of the little cliff without seeing anything but dirt, rocks, and bushes. Then he had to make a wide detour to get to the bottom of the cliff.

“I suppose it’s a wild-goose chase, and I’ll have my work for my pains,” he grumbled. “Oh, rats! Why did I have to fall in with Jasniff on this trip? I wish that fellow was at the North 79Pole or down among the Hottentots, or somewhere where he couldn’t bother me!”

Dave began to search around in the vicinity of the spot where he had fallen. He was almost ready to give up in despair when his eye caught sight of a white-looking object some distance below. Eagerly he climbed down to the place where the object lay, and the next moment set up a cry of joy.

“Hurrah! Here are Mr. Obray’s documents!” he exclaimed. “I hope they are all right.”

A hasty inspection convinced him that the legal-looking envelope and its contents were intact. Having inspected them carefully, he placed the packet inside of his shirt.

“I won’t take any more chances with it,” he told himself. “Somebody will have to rip my clothing off to get that envelope away.”

With the envelope safe in his possession once more, Dave felt exceedingly light-hearted. But the letter from Jessie, as well as the communication from Uncle Dunston, and the pocketbook with the forty odd dollars in it, were still missing, and he spent some time looking for those things.

“It doesn’t matter so much about the letters, even though I hate to part with the one from Jessie,” he reasoned. “But I’d like to set my eyes 80on that pocketbook with the forty-two or forty-three dollars it held.”

But our hero’s success had come to an end with the finding of the envelope to be delivered at Orella; and although he searched around for a quarter of an hour longer, nothing of any value came to sight. Then, with a deep sigh, he pulled himself up once more to the trail, and set off on a hunt for his horse.

“Jasniff was headed in the opposite direction, and maybe he didn’t go after Sport,” Dave argued to himself. “Anyhow, I’ve got to go that way, even if I have to journey on foot.”

Painfully our hero limped along, for the climbing up and down on the rocks had done the lame ankle no good. He had had to loosen his shoe, for the ankle had swollen not a little.

“If I could only bathe it it wouldn’t be so bad,” he thought.

But there was no water at hand, and the small quantity he carried in a flask for drinking purposes was too precious to be used on the injured limb.

He had covered several yards when his lame ankle gave him such a twinge that he had to sit down to give it a rest.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t find that horse,” he thought bitterly.

He was sitting and nursing the hurt ankle and looking over the landscape in the valley below him, 81when something on one of the bushes less than fifty feet away caught his eye.

“I wonder what that can be,” he mused. “It doesn’t look like a bird’s nest. It looks more like an old shoe. I wonder——Can it be my pocketbook?”

The last thought was so electrifying that Dave leaped to his feet, and, regardless of the painful ankle, walked over to the edge of the trail. Here he could see the object quite plainly, and he lost no time in crawling down to the bushes and obtaining it.

It was indeed his pocketbook, but wide open and empty. Even the few cards and slips of paper it had contained were missing.

“This proves one thing,” he reasoned bitterly. “Jasniff picked that pocketbook up where we had the fight, and he came this way while he was emptying it, then he threw it away.”

Dave was also sure of another thing. The pocketbook and the two letters had been in the same pocket, and he felt certain that Nick Jasniff had also confiscated the two communications.

“Now the question is, if he came this way, did he get Sport?” Dave mused. “If he did, then it’s good-bye to the letters, the money and the horse.”

Placing the empty wallet in his pocket, Dave sat down and rested his lame ankle. He counted the 82loose change in his trousers’ pocket and found he had eighty-five cents. Then he limped on once more around another bend in the trail.

Here a sight filled him with satisfaction. At this point the rocks came to an end and there was a fairly good bit of pasture-land, and here stood Sport, feeding............