At the last flash, the man sprang to his feet, and searched the mountain
peaks and spurs behind him. On lonely Granite Peak, at the far end of the
Galena Range, a flash of light caught his eye--then another and another.
With an exclamation, he lifted his glass. He could distinguish nothing but
the peak from which had come the flashes. He turned toward the valley to
see a long flash and then--only the haze and the dark spot that he knew to
be the orange groves about Fairlands.
Aaron King sank, weak and trembling, against the rock. What should he do?
What could he do? The signals might mean much. They might mean nothing.
Brian Oakley's words that morning, came to him; "I am recognizing every
possibility, and letting nothing _nothing_, get away from me." Instantly,
he was galvanized into life. Idle thinking, wondering, conjecturing could
accomplish nothing.
Riding as fast as possible down to the boulder beside the trail, where he
was to leave his message, he wrote a note and placed it under the rock.
Then he set out, to ride the fire-break along the top of the range, toward
the distant Granite Peak. An hour's riding took him to the end of the
fire-break, and he saw that from there on he must go afoot.
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