the silver-studded bridle.

For a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes.
It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere
thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now
waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple
distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills--
hills it might be of a greener kind--and above them invisibly
supported, and seeming indeed to hang in the blue, were the snowclad
summits of mountains that grew larger and bolder to the north-westward
as the sides of the valley drew together. And westward the valley
opened until a distant darkness under the sky told where the forests
began. But the three men looked neither east nor west, but only
steadfastly across the valley.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere,"
he said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "But after all,
they had a full day's start."

"They don't know we are after them," said the little man on the white
horse.

"SHE would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to himself.

"Even then they can't go fast. They've got no beast but the mule,
and all to-day the girl's foot has been bleeding---"

The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage
on him. "Do you think I haven't seen that?" he snarled.