A more astounding surprise than before awaited the lad. His hair almost lifted itself as he found himself staring at vacancy, with no sign of a living person in sight. Whatever had been the cause of this mysterious performance, it was very apparent that the solution rested not with the young fugitive.

“I'm tired of this,” he exclaimed, impatiently, after he had waited several minutes, “and it is n't going to be played on me again.”

With this, he began clambering up out of the ravine, with the resolve to reach some place where no shadowy horseman could ride over him.

The climbing was difficult at first, but he soon reached a point where the inclination was not so steep, and where he could progress with much more ease and facility. In this way he in time reached the upper level, and, believing himself out of range of his phantom pursuer, had time to look about for some sleeping-place for the night.

He frequently paused and listened, but could not see or hear anything of man or beast, and, confident that no danger was to be apprehended from either, he devoted himself to hunting for some refuge, that he could consider secure against molestation. His first inclination was to seek out a place among the rocks, as he was likely to gain room where he could stretch out at his ease and enjoy a few hours' slumber, but, on reflection, there were several objections to this.

In that part of the world were an abundance of poisonous serpents, and he had a natural dread of disturbing some of them.

“If I can find the right kind of tree, I think that will be the best sort of a place, for nothing could get at me there, and there may be all the limbs I want to make a bed. I guess there's the location now.”

He was walking along all the time that he had been thinking and talking, and, at this juncture, he approached a straggling group of trees, which seemed likely to offer the very refuge he was seeking. He made his way toward them with quickened steps.

Fred found himself upon a sort of plateau, broken here and there by rocks, boulders, and irregularities of surface, but in the main easy to be traversed, and he lost no time in making a survey of the grove which had caught his eye. There were some twenty in all, and several of them offered the very shelter. The limbs were no more than six or eight feet above the ground, and the largest trees were fifty feet in height, the branches appearing dense, and capable, apparently, of affording as firm a support as anyone could need while asleep.

“I guess that will do,” he concluded, after surveying the largest, which happened to stand on the outer edge of the grove. “If I can get the bed, there ain't any danger of being bothered by snakes and wild animals.”

Fred naturally pondered a moment as to the best means of climbing into the tree with his gun. It was full size, and of such weight that he had been considerably wearied in carrying it such a distance, but it contained a precious charge, to be used in some emergency that was likely to arise, and no man was wealthy enough to buy it from him. The way that he decided upon was to leave the gun against the trunk of the tree, and then climb in the way that comes natural to a boy. The barrel of course, would bother him a little, but he could pull through very well, and he immediately set about doing so.

As he expected, the gun got in his way, but he managed it very well, without knocking it down, and in a few minutes had climbed high enough to grasp the first limb with one hand, which was all that h............