For a long time after the departure of her visitors, Patty Sinclair sat thinking. Was it true, all this man had told her? She remembered vividly the beautiful tribute he had paid her father and the emotion that had gripped him as he finished. Surely his words rang true. They were true, or else the man was a consummate actor as well as an unscrupulous knave. She recalled the boyish smile, the story of Lord Clendenning's terrible journey, and the impatience with which he had silenced the Englishman's self-criticism. What would be more natural than that two men thrown together in the middle of the hill country, as her father and Bethune had been thrown together, should have pooled their interests, especially if each possessed an essential that the other did not. There had been somehow a sincerity about the man that carried conviction. She liked his readyadmission that her father's knowledge of mining greatly exceeded his own. And the assertion that he had advanced sums of money for the carrying on of the work sounded plausible enough, for the girl knew that her father's income had been small—pitiably small, but enough, he had always insisted, for his meager needs. Unquestionably, up to that point the man's words had carried the ring of truth. Then came the false notes; the open accusation of Vil Holland, and the warning as to the concealment of the map and photos which she had twice purposely refused to admit that she possessed. This was the second time he had gone out of his way to warn her against Vil Holland. On occasion of their previous meeting, he had hinted that Holland might pose as a friend of her father—a pose Bethune, himself, boldly assumed. Perhaps Vil Holland had been a friend of her father. In the matter of the pack sack, to whom would a man intrust his belongings, if not to a friend? Surely not to an enemy, nor to one he had reason to suspect. And now Bethune openly accused him of cutting the pack sack, and intimated that he would not hesitate to rob her of her secret.
For a long time she sat with her elbow on thetable and her chin resting in her palm, staring out at the overshadowing hills. "If there was only somebody," she muttered. "Somebody I could—" Suddenly she leaped to her feet. "No, I'm glad there isn't! I'll play the game alone! I came out here to do it, and I'll do it, in spite of forty Vil Hollands, and Bethunes, and Lord Clendennings! I'll find the mine myself—and I'll call it a mine, too, if I want to! And then, after I find it, if Mr. Monk Bethune can show me that he is entitled to a share in it, I'll give it to him—and not before. I'll stay right here till I find it, or till my money gives out, and when it does, I'll earn some more and come back again till that's gone!" Crossing the room, she stamped determinedly out the door, threw the saddle onto her cayuse, and rode rapidly down the creek. Horseback riding always exhilarated her, even back home where she had been obliged to keep to roads, or the well-worn courses of the hunt club. But here in the hills where the very air was a tonic that sent the blood coursing through her veins, and where tier after tier, the mighty mountains rolled away into the distance, as if flaunting a challenge to come and explore their secrets, and unscarred valleys gave glimpses of alluring vistas, the exhilarationamounted almost to intoxication. As her horse's feet thudded the ground, and splashed in and out of the shallows of the creek, she laughed aloud for the very joy of living. She pulled her horse to a walk as she skirted the fence of Watts's upper pasture, and her eyes rested with approval upon the straightened posts and taut wire. "At last Mr. Watts has bestirred himself. I hope he will keep on, now, that he's got the habit, and fix up the rest of the ranch. I wonder why that Vil Holland disapproved when he mentioned that he had leased his pasture. It seems as though nothing can happen in this country unless Vil Holland is mixed up in it someway. And, now I'm down this far, I'll just find out whether Vil Holland did take that pack down here for daddy. And if he did I'll let him know mighty quick, the next time I see him, that I know all about it's being cut open."
With her tubs on a bench, and the baby propped and tied securely in an old wooden rocker, Ma Watts was up to her elbows in her "week's worsh." Watts sat in his accustomed place, his chair tilted against the shady side of the house. "Laws sakes, ef hit hain't Mr. Sinclair's darter!" cried the woman, shaking the suds from her bare arms, "How be yo', honey? An' how's the sheep camp?Microby Dandeline tellen us how yo'-all scrubbed, an' scraped, an' cleaned 'til hit shined like a nigger's heel. Hit's nice to be clean, that-a-way ef yo' got time, but with five er six young-uns to take keer of, an' a passel of chickens a-runnin' in under foot all day, seems like a body cain't keep clean nohow. Microby says how yo' got a rale curtin' in yo' winder, an' all kinds of pert doin' an' fixin's. That's hit, git right down off yer horse. Land! I wus so busy hearin' 'bout yo' fixin' up the sheep camp, thet I plumb fergot my manners. Watts, get a cheer! An' 'pears like yo' could say 'Howdy' when anyone comes a visitin'."
"I aimed to," mumbled Watts apologetically, as he dragged a chair from the kitchen, "I wus jest a-aidgin' 'round fer a chanct."
"I can't stay but a minute, see, the shadows are already half way across the valley. I just thought I'd take a little ride before supper."
"Law, yes, some folks likes to ride hossback, but fer me, I'd a heap ruther go in a jolt wagon. Beats all the dif'fence in folks. Seems like the folks out yere jist take to hit nachel. Yo' be'n huntin' yo' pa's location yet?"
"No, I've been getting things in shape around the cabin. I'm going to start prospecting to-morrow." She glanced back along the valley, "I suppose my father came along this way when he left his pack on his way East," she said.
"No, mom," Watts rubbed his chin, reflectively. "Hit wus Vil Holland brung in his pack. Seems like yo' pa wus in a right smart of a hurry when he left, so Vil taken his pack down yere an' me an' the boys put hit in the barn fer to keep hit saft. Then Vil he rud on down the crick, hell bent fer 'lection——"
"Watts! Hain't yo' shamed a-cussin'?" cried his scandalized spouse.
"Why was he in such a hurry?" asked the girl.
"I dunno. He jes' turned the mewl loost an' says to keep the pack till yo' pa come back, an' larruped off."
Patty rose from the chair and gathered up her bridle reins. "I must be going, really. You see, I've got my chores to do, and supper to get, and I want to go to bed early so I'll be fresh in the morning." She mounted, and turned to Ma Watts: "Can't you come up some day and bring the children? I'd love to have you. Let's arrange the day now, so I will be sure to be home."
"Lawzie, I'd give a purty! Listen at thet, now, Watts. Cain't we fix to go?"
Watts fumbled his beard: "Why, yas, I reckon, some day, mebbe."
"What day can you come?" asked Patty.
"Well, le's see, this yere's about a Tuesday." He paused, glanced up at the sky, and gave careful scrutiny to the horizon. "How'd Sunday a week suit yo'—ef hit don't rain?"
"Fine," agreed the girl, smiling. "And, by the way, I came down past the upper pasture. The fence looks grand. It didn't take long to fix it, did it?"
"Well, hit tuk quite a spell—all day yeste'day, an' up 'til noon to-day. We only got one side an' halft another done, an' they's two sides an' a halft yet. But Mr. Bethune came by this noon, him an' Lord, an' 'lowed he worn't in no gret hurry fer hit, causen he heerd from Schultz thet the hoss business 'ud haf to wait over a spell——"
"An' Lord, he come down an' boughten a lot of aigs offen me. Him an' Mr. Bethune is both got manners."
"Women folks likes 'em better'n what men does, seems like," opined Watts, reflectively.
"Why don't men like them?" asked the girl eagerly.
"I dunno. Seems like they jes' nachelly mistrust 'em someways."
"Did my father like him—Mr. Bethune?"
"'Cordin' to Mr. Bethune they wus gret buddies, but when I'd run acrost yo' pa in the hills, 'pears like he wus allus alone er elsen Vil Holland was along. But, Mr. Bethune claims he set a heap by yo' pa, like the time he come an' 'lowed to take away his pack. I wouldn't let hit go, 'cause thet hain't the way Vil said, an' Mr. Bethune, he started in to git mad, but then he laffed, an' said hit didn't make no diff'ence, 'cause all he wanted wus to be shore hit wus saft kep."
"An' Pa mos' hed to shoot him, though, 'fore he laffed. I done tol' Pa he hadn't ort to. Lessen yo' runnin' a still, yo' hain't no call to shoot folks comin' 'round."
"Shoot him!" exclaimed Patty, staring in surprise at the easy-going Watts.
"Yas, he aimed to take thet pack anyways. So I went in an' got down the ol' rifle-gun an' pintedly tole him I'd shoot him dead ef he laid holt o' thet pack, an' then he laffed an' rud off."
"But, would you have shot him, really?"
"Yas," answered the mountaineer, in a matter-of-fact tone, "I'd of hed to."
Patty rode home slowly and in silence—thinking. And that evening, by the light of her coal-oil lamp she puzzled over the roughly sketched map with its cryptic signs and notations. There were a half-dozen samples, too—chips of rough, heavy rock that didn't look a bit like gold. "High grade," her daddy had called them as he babbled incessantly upon his death-bed. But they looked dull and unpromising to the girl as they lay upon the table. She returned to the sketch. With the exception of a single small dot, placed beside what was evidently the principal creek of the locality, the map consisted only of lines and shadings which evidently indicated creeks and mountains—no cross, no letter, no number—nothing to indicate landmark or location, only a confusing network of creeks and feeders branching out like the limbs of a tree. Along the bottom of the paper the girl read the following line:
"SC 1 S1 1/2 E 1 S ↑ to ∩ 2 W to a. to b. stake L.C. ∑ centre."
"I suppose that was all clear as daylight to daddy, and maybe it would be to anyone who is used to maps, but as for doing me any good, he might as well have copied a line from the Chinese dictionary."
She stared hopelessly at the unintelligible line, and then at the two photographs. One, taken evidently from a point well up the side of a hill, showed a narrow valley, flanked upon the opposite side by a high rock wall. Toward the upper end of the wall an irregular crack or cleft split it from top to bottom. The other was a "close up" taken at the very base of the cleft, and showed only the narrow aperture in the rock, and the ground at its base. For a long time she sat studying the photographs, memorizing every feature and line of them; the conformation of the valley, the contour of the rock wall, the position and shapes of the trees and rock fragments. "That must be the mine," she concluded, at length, "right there at the bottom of that crack." She closed her eyes and conjured a mental picture of the little valley, of the rock wall, and of the cleft that would mark the location. "I'd know it if I should see it," she muttered, "let's see: big broken rocks strewn along the floor of the valley, and a tiny creek, and then the rock cliff, it must be about as high as—about twice as tall as the trees that grow along the foot of it, and it's highest at the upper end, then there's a big tree standing alone almost in the middle of the valley, and the gnarled,scraggly trees that grow along the top of the rocks, and the valley must be as wide as from here to that clump of trees beyond my wood-pile—about a block, I guess. And there's the big crack in the cliff that starts straight," she traced the course of the crack with her finger upon the table top, "and then zigzags to the ground." Her glance returned to the map, and she frowned. "I don't think that's a bit of good to me. But I don't care as long as I have the photographs. I'll just ride, and ride, and ride through these hills till I find that valley, and then—" The little clock on the shelf beside the mirror ticked loudly. Her thoughts strayed far beyond the confines of the little cabin on Monte's Creek, as she planned how she would spend the golden stream that was to flow from the foot of the rock ledge.
Gradually her vision became confused, the incessant ticking of the little clock sounded farther, and farther away, her head settled to rest upon her folded arms, and she was in the midst of a struggle of some kind, in which a belted cowboy and a suave, sloe-eyed quarter-breed were fighting to gain possession of her mine—or, were they trying to help her locate it? And what was it daddy was trying to tell her? She couldn't quite hear. Shewished he would talk louder—but it was something about the mine, and the men who were struggling.... She awoke with a start, and glanced swiftly about the cabin. The roots of her hair along the back of her neck tingled uncomfortably. She felt she was not alone—that somewhere eyes were watching her. The chintz curtain that screened the open window swayed lightly in the night breeze and she jumped nervously. "I'm a perfect fool!" she exclaimed, aloud: "As if any 'Jack the Peeper' would be prowling around these mountains! It's just nerves, that's all it is."
Slipping the map and the photographs beneath a plate, she crossed to the door and made sure the bar was in place, took the white butted revolver from its holster, and with a determined tightening of the lips, stepped to the window, drew the curtain aside, and stood peering out into the dark. The only sounds were the ticking of the clock, and the purling of the water as it rushed among the stones of the shallow ford. Overhead the stars winked brightly, in sharp contrast to the velvet blackness of the pines. The sound of the water soothed her, and she laughed—a forced little laugh, but it made her feel better. Crossing to the table she blew out the lamp and, placing herrevolver at the head of her bunk, undressed in the darkness. She raised the plate, took the map and the two precious photographs, placed them in their envelope, and slipped the chain about her neck.
For a long time she lay between her blankets, wide awake, conscious that she was straining her ears to catch some faint sound. A half dozen times she caught herself listening with nerves on edge and muscles taut, and each time forced herself to relax. But always she came back to that horrible, tense listening. She charged herself with cowardice, and pooh-poohed her fears, but it was no use, and she wound up by covering her head with her blanket. "I don't care, therewassomebody watching, but if he thinks he's going to find out where I keep these," her hand clutched the little oiled packet, "he'll have to come again, that's all."
It was nearly an hour later that Monk Bethune quitted his post close against the cabin wall, at the point where the chinking had fallen away from the logs, and slipped silently into the timber.
The gray of early morning was just beginning to render objects in the little room indistinguishable when Patty awoke. She made a hasty toilet, lighted the fire, and while the water was heating for her coffee, delved into the pack sack and drew out a gray flannel shirt which she viewed critically from every conceivable angle. She tried it on, turning this way and that, before the mirror. "Daddy wasn't so much larger than I am," she smiled, "I can take a tuck in the sleeves, and turn back the collar and it will fit pretty well. Anyway, it will be better than that riding jacket. It will look less citified, and more—more prospecty." A few moments sufficed for the alteration and as the girl stood before the mirror and carefully knotted her brilliant scarf, she nodded emphatic approval.
Breakfast over, she washed her dishes and asshe put them on their shelf her glance rested upon the bits of broken rock fragments. Instantly, her thoughts flew to the night before, and the feeling that someone had been watching her. Rapidly her glance flashed about the cabin searching a place to hide them. "They're too heavy to carry," she murmured. "And, yet," her eyes continued their search, lingering for a moment upon some nook or corner only to flit to another, and another, "every place I can think of seems as though it would be the very first place anyone would look." Her eyes fell upon the empty tomato can that she had forgotten to throw into the coulee after last night's supper. She placed the samples in the can. "I might put it with the others in the cupboard, but if anybody looked there they would be sure to see that it had been opened. Where do people hide things? I might go out and dig a hole and bury it, but if anyone were watching—" Suddenly her eyes lighted: "The very thing," she cried: "Nobody would think of looking among those old bottles and cars." And placing the can in the pan of dish-water, she carried it out and threw it onto the pile of rubbish in the coulee. Returning to the cabin, she put on her father's Stetson, slipped his revolverinto its holster, and buckling the belt about her waist, gave one last approving glance into the mirror, closed the door behind her, and saddled her horse. With the bridle reins in her hand she stood irresolute. In which direction should she start? Obviously, if she must search the whole country, she should begin somewhere and work systematically. She felt in the pocket of her skirt and reassured herself that the compass she had taken from the pack sack was there. Her eyes swept the valley and came to rest upon a deep notch in the hills that flanked it upon the west. A coulee sloped upward to the notch, and mounting, the girl crossed the creek and headed for the gap. It was slow and laborious work, picking her way among the loose rocks and fallen trees of the deep ravine that narrowed and grew steeper as she advanced. Loose rocks, disturbed by her horse's feet, clattered noisily behind her, and marks here and there in the soil told her that she was not the first to pass that way. "I wonder who it was?" she speculated. "Either Monk Bethune, or Vil Holland, or Lord Clendenning, I suppose. They all seem to be forever riding back and forth through the hills." At last she gained the summit, and pulled up to enjoy the view. Judging by thetrampled buffalo grass that capped the divide, the rider who preceded her had also stopped. She glanced backward, and there, showing above the tops of the trees that covered the slope, stood her own cabin, looking tiny and far away, but with its every detail standing out with startling clearness. She could even see the ax standing where she had left it beside the door, and the box she had placed at the end of the log wall to take the place of the cupboard as a home for the pack rats. "Whoever it was could certainly keep track of my movements from here without the least risk of being discovered," she thought, "and if he had field glasses!" She blushed, and turned her eyes to survey the endless succession of peaks and passes and valleys that lay spread out over the sea of hills. "How in the world am I ever going to find one tiny little valley among all these?" she wondered. Her heart sank at the vastness of it all, and at her own helplessness, and the utter hopelessness of her stupendous task. "Oh, I can never, never do it," she faltered, "—never." And, instantly ashamed of herself, clenched her small, gloved fist. "I will do it! My daddy found his mine, and he didn't have any pictures to go by either. He just delved and worked for years andyears—and at last he found it. I'd find it if there were twice as many hills and valleys. It may take me years—and I may find it to-day—just think! This very day I may ride into that little valley—or to-morrow, or the next day. It can't be far away. Mrs. Watts said daddy was always to be found within ten miles of the ranch."
She headed her horse down the opposite slope that slanted at a much easier gradient than the one she had just ascended. The trees on this side of the divide were larger and the hillside gradually flattened into a broad, tilted plateau. She gave her horse his head and breathed deeply of the pine-laden air as the animal swung in beside a tiny creek that flowed smooth and black through the dusky silence of the pines whose interlacing branches, high above, admitted the sunlight in irregular splashes of gold. There was little under-brush and the horse followed easily along the creek, where here and there, in the softer soil of damp places, the girl could see the hoof marks of the rider who had crossed the divide. "I wonder whether it was he who watched me last night? There was someone, I could feel it."
The creek sheered sharply around an out-cropping shoulder of rock, and the next instantPatty pulled up short, and sat staring at a little white tent that nestled close against the side of the huge monolith which stood at the edge of a broad, grassed opening in the woods. The flaps were thrown wide and the walls caught up to allow free passage of air. Blankets that had evidently covered a pile of boughs in one corner, were thrown over the ridgepole from which hung a black leather binocular case, and several canvas bags formed an orderly row along one side. A kettle hung suspended over a small fire in front of the tent, and a row of blackened cooking utensils hung from a wooden bar suspended between two crotched stakes. Out in the clearing, a man was bridling a tall buckskin horse. The man was Vil Holland. Curbing a desire to retreat unobserved into the timber, the girl advanced boldly across the creek and pulled up beside the fire. At the sound the man whirled, and Patty noticed that a lean, brown hand dropped swiftly to the butt of the revolver.
"Don't shoot!" she called, in a tone that was meant to be sarcastic, "I won't hurt you." Somehow, the sarcasm fell flat.
The man buckled the throat-latch of his bridle and picking up the reins, advanced hat in hand,leading the horse. "I beg your pardon," he said, gravely, "I didn't know who it was, when your horse splashed through the creek."
"You have enemies in the hills? Those you would shoot, or who would shoot you?"
He dropped the bridle reins, allowing them to trail on the ground. "If some kinds of folks wasn't a man's enemy he wouldn't be fit to have any friends," he said, simply. "And here in the hills it's just as well to be forehanded with your gun. Won't you climb down? I suppose you've had breakfast?"
Patty swung from the saddle and stood holding the bridle reins. "Yes, I've had breakfast, thank you. Don't let me keep you from yours."
"Had mine, too. If you don't mind I'll wash up these dishes, though. Just drop your reins—like mine. Your cayuse will stand as long as the reins are hangin'. It's the way they're broke—'tyin' 'em to the ground,' we call it." He glanced at her horse's feet, and pointed to a place beneath the fetlock from which the hair had been rubbed: "Rope burnt," he opined. "You oughtn't to put him out on a picket rope. Use hobbles. There's a couple of pair in your dad's war-bag."
"War-bag?"
"Yeh, it's down in Watts's barn, if he ain't hauled it up for you."
"What are hobbles?"
The man stepped to the tent and returned a moment later with two heavy straps fastened together by a bit of chain and a swivel. "These are hobbles, they work like this." He stooped and fastened the straps about the forelegs of the horse just above the fetlock. "He can get around all right, but he can't get far, and there is no rope to snag him."
Patty nodded. "Thank you," she said. "I'll try it. But how do you know there are hobbles in dad's pack?"
"Where would they be? He had a couple of pair. All his stuff is in there. He always traveled light."
"Did you leave my father's war-bag, as you call it, at Watts's?"
"Yeh, he was in somethin' of a hurry and didn't want to go around by the trail, so he left his outfit here and struck straight through the hills."
"Why was he in a hurry?"
The man placed the dishes in a pan and pouredwater over them. "I've got my good guess," he answered, thoughtfully.
"Which may mean anything, and tells me nothing."
Holland nodded, as he carefully wiped his tin plate. "Yeh, that's about the size of it."
His attitude angered the girl. "And I have heard he was not the only one in the hills that was in a hurry that day, and I suppose I can have my 'good guess' at that, and I can have my 'good guess' as to who cut daddy's pack sack, too."
"Yeh, an' you can change your guess as often as you want to."
"And every time I change it, I'd get farther from the truth."
"You might, an' you might get nearer." The cowpuncher was looking at her squarely, now. "You ain't left-handed, are you?" he asked, abruptly.
"No, of course not! Why?"
"Because, if you ain't, you better change that belt around so the holster'll carry on yer right side—or else leave it to home."
The coldly impersonal tone angered the girl. "Much better leave it home," she said, "so ifanyone wanted to get my map and photographs, he could do it without risk."
"If you had any sense you'd shut up about maps an' photos."
"At least I've got sense enough not to tell whether I carry them with me, or keep them hidden in a safe place."
"You carry 'em on you!" commanded the man, gruffly. "It's a good deal safer'ncachin' 'em." He laid his dishes aside, poured the water from the pan, wiped it, hung it in its place, and picking up his saddle blanket, examined it carefully.
"I wonder why my father entrusted his pack sack to you?" said Patty, eyeing him resentfully. "Were you and he such great friends?"
"Knew one another tolerable well," answered Holland, dryly.
"You weren't, by any chance—partners, were you?"
He glanced up quickly. "Didn't I tell you once that yer dad played a lone hand?"
"You knew he made a strike?"
"That's what folks think. But I suppose he told Monk Bethune all about it."
The thinly veiled sneer goaded the girl to anger."Yes, he did," she answered, hotly, "and he told me, too!"
"Told Monk all about it, did he—location an' all, I suppose?"
"He intended to, yes," answered the girl, defiantly. "The day he made his strike, Mr. Bethune happened to be away up in British Columbia, and daddy told Lord Clendenning that he had made his strike, and he drew a map and sent it to Mr. Bethune by Lord Clendenning."
Holland smoothed the blanket into place upon the back of the buckskin, and reached for his saddle. "An' of course, Monk, he wouldn't file till you come, so you'd be sure an' get a square deal——"
"He never got the map or the photos. Lord Clendenning lost them in a river. And he nearly lost his life, and was rescued by an Indian."
There was a sound very like a cough, and Patty glanced sharply at the cowpuncher, but his back was toward her, and he was busy with his cinch. "Tough luck," he remarked, as he adjusted the latigo strap. "An', you say, yer dad told you all about this partnership business?"
"No, he didn't."
"Who did?"
"Mr. Bethune."
"Oh."
Something in the tone made the girl feel extremely foolish. Holland was deliberately strapping the brown leather jug to his saddle horn, and gathering up her reins, she mounted. "At least, Mr. Bethune is a gentleman," she emphasized the word nastily.
"An' they can't hang him for that, anyway," he flung back, and swung lightly into the saddle, "I must be goin'."
"And you don't even deny cutting the pack?"
He looked her squarely in the eyes and shook his head. "No. You kind of half believe Monk about the partnership. But you don't believe I cut that pack, so what's the use denying it?"
"I do——"
"If you should happen to get lost, don't try to outguess your compass. Always pack a little grub an' some matches, an' if you need help, three shots, an' then three more, will bring anyone that's in hearin' distance."
"I hope I shall never have to summon you for help."
"It is quite a bother," admitted the other."An' if you'll remember what I've told you, you prob'ly won't have to. So long."
The cowboy settled the Stetson firmly upon his head, and with never a glance behind him, headed his horse down the little creek.
The girl watched him for a moment with angry eyes, and then, urging her horse forward, crossed the plateau at a gallop, and headed up the valley. "Of all the—theboors! He certainly is the limit. And the worst of it is I don't know whether he deliberately tries to insult me, or whether it's just ignorance. Anyway, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could see him. And I do believe he cut daddy's pack sack, so there!" The heavy revolver dangling at her side attracted her attention, and she pulled up her horse and changed it to the opposite side. "I suppose I did look like a fool," she admitted, "but he needn't have told me so. And I bet I know as much about a compass as he does, anyway. And I'll tie my horse up with a rope if I want to."
Beyond the plateau, the valley narrowed rapidly, and innumerable ravines and coulees led steeply upward to lose themselves among the timbered slopes of the mountain sides. Crossing a low divide at the head of the valley, she reinedin her horse and gazed with thumping heart into the new valley that lay before her. There, scarcely a mile away, stretched a rock ledge—and, yes, there were scraggly trees fringing its rim, and the valley was strewn with rock fragments! Her valley! The valley of the photographs! She laughed aloud, and urged her horse down the steep descent, heedless of the fact that upon the precarious, loose rock footing of the slope, a misstep would mean almost certain destruction.
Directly opposite the face of the rock wall she pulled her horse to a stand. "Surely, this must be the place, but—where is the crack? It should be about there." Her eyes searched the face of the cliff for the zigzag crevice. "Maybe I'm too close to it," she muttered. "The picture was taken from a hillside across the valley. That must be the hill—the one with the bare patch half way up. That's right where he must have stood when he took the photograph." The hillside rose abruptly, and abandoning her horse, the girl climbed the steep ascent, pausing at frequent intervals for breath. At last, she stood upon the bare shoulder of the hill and gazed out across the valley, and as she gazed, her heart sank. "It isn't the place," she muttered. "There is no bigtree, and the rock cliff isn't a bit like the one in the picture—and I thought I had found it sure! I wonder how many of those rock walls there are in the hills? And will I ever find the right one?"
Once more in the saddle, she crossed another divide and scanned another rock wall, and farther down, another. "I believe every single valley in these hills has its own rock ledge, and some of them three or four!" she cried disgustedly, as she seated herself beside a tiny spring that trickled from beneath a huge rock, and proceeded to devour her lunch. "I had no idea how hungry I could get," she stared ruefully at the paper that had held her two sandwiches. "Next time I'll bring about six."
Producing her compass, she leveled a place among the stones. "Let's see if I can point to the north without its help." She glanced at the sun and carefully scanned the tumultuous skyline. "It is there," she indicated a gap between two peaks, and glanced at the compass. "I knew I wouldn't get turned around," she said, proudly. "I didn't miss it but just a mite—anyway it's near enough for all practical purposes. If that's north," she speculated, "then I must have started east and then turned south, and then west, andthen south again, and my cabin must be almost due north of me now." She returned the compass to her pocket. "I'll explore a little farther and then work toward home."
Mounting, she turned northward, and emerging abruptly from a clump of trees, caught a glimpse of swift motion a quarter of a mile away, where her trail had dipped into the valley, as a horse and rider disappeared like a flash into the timber. "He's following me!" she cried angrily, "sneaking along my trail like a coyote! I'll tell him just what I think of him and his cowardly spying." Urging her horse into a run, she reached the spot to find it deserted, although it seemed incredible that anyone could have negotiated the divide unnoticed in that brief space of time. "I saw him plain as day," she murmured, as she turned her horse toward the opposite side of the valley. "I couldn't tell for sure that it was he—I didn't even see the color of the horse—but who else could it be? He knew I started out this way, and he knew that I carried the map and photos, and was hunting daddy's claim. I know, now who was watching the other night." She shuddered. "And I've got to stay here 'til I find that claim, knowing all the time that I am being watched! There'sno place I can go that he will not follow. Even in my own cabin, I'll always feel that eyes are watching me. And when I do find the mine, he'll know it as soon as I do, and it will be a race to file." Drawing up sharply, she gritted her teeth, "And he knows the short cuts through the hills, and I don't. But I will know them!" she cried, "and when I do find the mine, Mr. Vil Holland is going to have the race of his life!"
Another parallel valley, and another, she explored before turning her horse's head toward the high divide that she had reasoned separated her from Monte's Creek at a point well above her cabin. Comparatively low ridges divided these valleys, and as she topped each ridge, the girl swerved sharply into the timber and, concealing herself, intently watched the back trail—a maneuver that caused the solitary horseman who watched from a safe distance, to chuckle audibly as he carefully wiped the lenses of his binoculars.
The sunlight played only upon the higher peaks when at last, weary and dispirited, she negotiated the steep descent to Monte's Creek at a point a mile above the sheep camp. "If he'd only photographed something besides a rock wall," she muttered, petulantly, "I'd stand some show offinding it." At the door of the cabin she slipped from her saddle, and pausing with her hand on the coiled rope, dropped her eyes to the rubbed place below her horse's fetlock. A moment later she knelt and fastened a pair of hobbles about the horse's ankles, and, removing the saddle, watched the animal roll clumsily in the grass, and shuffle awkwardly to the creek where he sucked greedily at the cold water. Entering the cabin, she lighted the lamp and stared about her. Her glance traveled one by one over the objects of the little room. Everything was apparently as she had left it—yet—an uncomfortable, creepy sensation stole over her. She knew that the room had been searched.
During the next few days Patty Sinclair paid scant attention to rock ledges. Each morning she saddled her cayuse and rode into the hills to the southward, crossing divides and following creeks and valleys from their sources down their winding, twisting lengths. After the first two or three trips she left her gun at home. It was heavy and cumbersome, and she realized, in her unskilled hand, useless. Always she felt that she was being followed, but, try as she would, never could catch so much as a fleeting glimpse of the rider who lurked on her trail. Nevertheless, during these long rides which she made for the sole purpose of familiarizing herself with all the short cuts through the hills, she derived satisfaction from the fact that, while the trips were of immense value to her, Vil Holland was having his trouble for his pains.
Ascertaining at length that, after crossing thehigh divide at the head of Monte's Creek, any valley leading southward would prove a direct outlet onto the bench and thereby furnish a short cut to town, she returned once more to her prospecting—to the exploration of little valleys, and the examination of innumerable rock ledges.
Accepting as part of the game the fact that her cabin was searched almost daily during her absence she derived grim enjoyment in contemplation of the searcher's repeated disappointment. Several attempts to surprise the marauder at his work proved futile, and she was forced to admit that in the matter of shrewdness and persistence, his ability exceeded her own. "The real test will come when I locate the mine," she told herself one evening, as she sat alone in her little cabin. "Then the prize will go to the fastest horse." She drew a small folding check-book from her pocket and frowningly regarded its latest stub. "A thousand dollars isn't very much, and—it's half gone."
Next day she rode out of the hills and, following the trail for town, dismounted at Thompson's ranch which nestled in its coulee well out upon the bench, and waited for the rancher, who drove up beside a huge stack with a load of alfalfa, to unhitch his team.
"Have you a good saddle horse for sale?" she asked, abruptly.
Thompson released the tug chains, and hung the bridles upon the hames, whereupon the horses of their own accord started toward the stable, followed by a ranch hand who slid from the top of the stack. Without answering, he called to the man: "Take the lady's horse along an' give him a feed."
"It's noon," he explained, turning to the girl. "You'll stay fer dinner." He pointed toward the house. "You'll find Miz T. in the kitchen. If you want to wash up, she'll show you."
The ranch hand was leading her horse toward the barn. "But," objected Patty, "I didn't mean to run in like this just at meal time. Mrs. Thompson won't be expecting a guest, and I brought a lunch with me."
Thompson laughed: "You must be a pilgrim in these parts," he said. "Most folks would ride half a day to git here 'round feedin' time. We always count on two or three extry, so I guess they'll be a-plenty." The man's laugh was infectious, and Patty found herself smiling. She liked him from the first. There was a ponderous heartiness about him, and she liked the way hislittle brown eyes sparkled from out their network of sun-browned wrinkles. "You trot along in, now, an' tell Miz T. she can begin dishin' up whenever she likes. We'll be 'long d'rectly. They'll be plenty time to talk horse after we've et. My work teams earns a good hour of noonin', an' I don't begrudge 'em an hour an' a half, hot days."
Patty found Mrs. Thompson slight and quiet as her husband was big and hearty. But her smile was as engaging as his, and an indefinable something about her made the girl feel at home the moment she crossed the threshold. "I came to see Mr. Thompson about a horse, and he insisted that I stay to dinner," she apologized.
"Why, of course you'll stay to dinner. But you must be hot an' tired. The wash dish is there beside the door. You better use it before Thompson an' the hands comes, they always slosh everything all up—they don't wash, they waller."
"Mr. Thompson said to tell you you could begin to dish up whenever you're ready."
The woman smiled. "Yes, an' have everythin' set an' git cold, while they feed the horses an' then like's not, stand 'round a spell an' size up the hay stack, er mebbe mend a piece of harness or somethin'.I guess you ain't married, er you wouldn't expect a man to meals 'til you see him comin'. Seems like no matter how hungry they be, if they's some little odd job they can find to do just when you get the grub set on, they pick that time to do it. 'Specially if it's somethin' that don't 'mount to anythin', an' like's not's b'en layin' 'round in plain sight a week."
Patty laughingly admitted she was not married. "But, I'd teach 'em a lesson," she said. "I'd put the things on and let them get cold."
The older woman smiled, and at the sound of voices, peered out the door: "Here they come now," she said, and proceeded to carry heaping vegetable dishes and a steaming platter of savory boiled meat from the stove to the table. There was a prodigious splashing outside the door and a moment later Thompson appeared, followed by his two ranch hands, hair wet and shining, plastered tightly to their scalps, and faces aglow from vigorous scrubbing. "You mind Mr. Sinclair, that used to prospect in the hills," introduced Mrs. Thompson; "this is his daughter."
Her husband bowed awkwardly: "Glad to know you. We know'd yer paw—used to stop now an' again on his way to town. He was asmart man. Liked to talk to him. He'd be'n all over." The man turned his attention to his plate and the meal proceeded in solemn silence to its conclusion. The two ranch hands arose and disappeared through the door, and tilting back in his chair Thompson produced a match from his pocket, and proceeded to whittle it into a toothpick. "I heard in town how you was out in the hills," he began. "They said yer paw went back East—" he paused as if uncertain how to proceed.
Patty nodded: "Yes, he went back home, and this spring he died. He told me he had made a strike and I came out here to locate it."
The kindly brown eyes regarded her intently: "Ever do any prospectin'?"
"No. This is my first experience."
"I never, either. But, if I was you I'd kind of have an eye on my neighbors."
"You mean—the Wattses?" asked the girl in surprise.
The brown eyes were twinkling again: "No, Watts, he's all right! Only trouble with Watts is he sets an' herds the sun all day. But, they's others besides Watts in the hills."
"Yes," answered the girl, quickly, "I know.And that is the reason I came to see you about a horse."
"What's the matter with the one you got?"
"Nothing at all. He seems to be a good horse. He's fast too, when I want to crowd him. But, I need another just as good and as fast as he is. Have you one you will sell?"
"I'll sell anything I got, if the price is right," smiled the man.
Patty regarded him thoughtfully: "I haven't very much money," she said. "How much is he worth?"
Thompson considered: "A horse ain't like a cow-brute. There ain't no regular market price. Horses is worth just as much as you can get folks to pay fer 'em. But it looks like one horse ort to be enough to prospect 'round the hills on."
"It isn't that," explained the girl. "If I buy him I shall try to arrange with you to leave him right here where I can get him at a moment's notice. I shall probably never need him but once, but when I do, I shall need him badly." She paused, but without comment the man waited for her to proceed: "I believe I am being followed, and if I am, when I locate the claim, I am going to have to race for the register's office."
Thompson leaned forward upon the table and chewed his toothpick rapidly: "By Gosh, an' you want to have a fresh horse here for a change!" he exclaimed, his eyes beaming approval.
"Exactly. Have you got the horse?"
The man nodded: "You bet I've got the horse! I've got a horse out there in the corral that'll run rings around anythin' in this country unless it's that there buckskin of Vil Holland's—an' I guess you ain't goin' to have no call to race him."
Patty was on the point of exclaiming that the buckskin was the very horse she would have to race, but instead she smiled: "But, if your horse started fresh from here, and even Vil Holland's horse had run clear from the mountains, this one could beat him to town, couldn't he?"
"Could do it on three legs," laughed the man.
"How much do you ask for him?" The girl waited breathless, thinking of her diminishing bank account.
Thompson's brow wrinkled: "I hold Lightnin' pretty high," he said, after a pause. "You see, some of us ranchers is holdin' a fast horse handy, a-waitin' fer word from the hills—an' when it comes, they's goin' to be the biggest horse-thief round-up the hill country ever seen. An' unlessI miss my guess they'll be some that's carried their nose pretty high that's goin' to snap down on the end of a tight one."
"Now, Thompson, what's the use of talkin' like that? Them things is bad enough to have to do, let alone set around an' talk about 'em. Anyone'd think you took pleasure in hangin' folks."
"I would—some folks."
The little woman turned to Patty: "He's just a-talkin'. Chances is, if it come to hangin', Thompson would be the one to try an' talk 'em out of it. Why, he won't even brand his own colts an' calves—makes the hands do it."
"That's different," defended the man. "They're little an' young an' they ain't never done nothin' ornery."
"But you haven't told me how much you want for your horse," persisted the girl.
"Now just you listen to me a minute. I don't want to sell that horse, an' there ain't no mortal use of you buyin' him. He's always here—right in the corral when he ain't in the stable, an' either place, all you got to do is throw yer kak on him an' fog it."
The girl stared at him in surprise: "You mean——"
"I mean that you're plumb welcome to use Lightnin' whenever you need him. An' if they's anything else I can do to help you beat out any ornery cuss that'd try an' hornswaggle you out of yer claim, you can count on me doin' it! An' whether you know it 'er not, I ain't the only one you can count on in a pinch neither." The man waved her thanks aside with a sweep of a big hand, and rose from the table. "Miz T. an' me'd like fer you to stop in whenever you feel like——"
"Yes, indeed, we would," seconded the little woman. "Couldn't you come over an' bring yer sewin' some day?"
Patty laughed: "I'm afraid I haven't much sewing to bring, but I'll come and spend the day with you some time. I'd love to."
The girl rode homeward with a lighter heart than she had known in some time. "Now let him follow me all he wants to," she muttered. "But I wonder why Mr. Thompson said I wouldn't have to race the buckskin. And who did he mean I could count on in a pinch—Watts, I guess, or maybe he meant Mr. Bethune."
As she saddled her horse next morning, Bethune presented himself at the cabin. "Where away?"he smiled as he rode close, and swung lightly to the ground.
"Into the hills," she answered, "in search of my father's lost mine."
The man's expression became suddenly grave: "Do you know, Miss Sinclair, I hate to think of your riding these hills alone."
Patty glanced at him in surprise: "Why?"
"There are several reasons. For instance, one never knows what will happen—a misstep on a dangerous trail—a broken cinch—any one of a hundred things may happen in the wilds that mean death or serious injury, even to the initiated. And the danger is tenfold in the case of a tender-foot."
The girl laughed: "Thank you. But, if anything is going to happen, it's going to happen. At least, I am in no danger from being run down by a street car or an automobile. And I can't be blown up by a gas explosion, or fall into a coal hole."
"But there are other dangers," persisted the man. "A woman, alone in the hills—especially you."
"Why 'especially me'? Plenty of women have lived alone before in places more dangerous thanthis, and have gotten along very well, too. You men are conceited. You think there can be no possible safety unless members of your own sex are at the helm of every undertaking or enterprise. But you are wrong."
Bethune shook his head: "But I have reason to believe that there is at least one person in these hills who believes you possess the secret of your father's strike—and who would stop at nothing to obtain that secret."
"I suppose you mean Vil Holland. I agree that he does seem to take more than a passing interest in my comings and goings. But he doesn't seem very fierce. Anyhow, I am not in the least afraid of him."
"What do you mean that he seems to take an interest in your comings and goings?" The question seemed a bit eager. "Surely he has not been following you!"
"Hasn't he? Then possibly you can tell me who has?"
"The scoundrel! And when you discover the lode he'll wait 'til you have set your stakes and posted your notice, and have gotten out of sight, and then he'll drive in his own stakes, stick up his own notice beside them and beat you to the register."
Patty laughed: "Race me, you mean. He won't beat me. Remember, I shall have at least a half-hour's start."
"A half-hour!" exclaimed Bethune. "And what is a half-hour in a fifty-mile race against that buckskin. Why, my dear girl, with all due respect for that horse of yours, Vil Holland's horse could give you two hours' start and beat you to the railroad."
"Maybe," smiled the girl. "But he's going to have to do it—that is, if I ever locate the lode."
"Ah, that is the point, exactly. It is that that brings me here. Not that alone," he hastened to add. "For I would ride far any day to spend a few moments with so charming a lady—and indeed, I should not have delayed my visit this long but for some urgent business to the northward. At all events, I'm here, and here I shall stay until, together, we have solved our mystery of the hills."
The girl glanced into the face alight with boyish enthusiasm, and felt irresistibly impelled to take this man into her confidence—to enlist his help in the working out of her unintelligible map, and to admit him to full partnership in her undertaking. There would be enough for both if theysucceeded in uncovering the lode. Her father had intended that he should share in his mine. She recalled his eulogy of her father, and his frank admission that there had been no agreement of partnership. If anyone ever had the appearance of perfect sincerity and candor this man had. She remembered her seriously depleted bank account. Bethune had money, and in case the search should prove long—Suddenly the words of Vil Holland flashed into her brain with startling abruptness: "Remember yer dad knew enough to play a lone hand." And again. "Did yer dad tell you about this partnership?" And the significant emphasis he placed upon the "Oh," when she had answered in the negative.
Bethune evidently had taken her silence for assent. He was speaking again: "The first thing to do is to find the starting point on the map and work it out step by step, then when we locate the lode, you and Clen and I will file the first three claims, and we'll file all the Wattses on the adjoining claims. That will give us absolute control of a big block of what is probably a most valuable property."
Again Bethune had referred directly to the map which she had never admitted she possessed. Hehad not said, "If you have a map." The man's assumption angered her: "You still persist in assuming that I have a map," she answered. "As a matter of fact, I'm depending entirely upon a photograph. I am riding blindly through the hills trying to find the spot that tallies with the picture."
Bethune frowned and shook his head doubtfully: "You might ride the hills for years, and pass the spot a dozen times and never recognize it. If you do not happen to strike the exact view-point you might easily fail to recognize it. Then, too, the landscape changes with the seasons of the year. However," his face brightened and the smile returned to his lips; "we have at least something to go on. We are not absolutely in the dark. Who knows? If the goddess of luck sits upon our shoulders, I myself may know the place well—may recognize it instantly! For years I have ridden these hills and I flatter myself that no one knows their hidden nooks and byways better than I. Even if I should not know the exact spot, it may be that I can tell by the general features its approximate locality, and thus limit our search to a comparatively small area."
Patty knew that her refusal to show the photographcould not fail to place her in an unfavorable position. Either she would appear to distrust this man whom she had no reason to distrust, or her action would be attributed to a selfish intention to keep the secret to herself, even though she knew she could only file one claim. The man's argument had been entirely reasonable—in fact, it seemed the sensible thing to do. Nevertheless, she did refuse, and refuse flatly: "I think, Mr. Bethune, that I would rather play a lone hand. You see, I started in on this thing alone, and I want to see it through—for the present, at least. After a while, if I find that I cannot succeed alone, I shall be glad of your assistance. I suppose you think me a fool, but it's a matter of pride, I guess."
Was it fancy, or did the black eyes flash a gleam of hate—a glitter of rage beneath their long up-curving lashes? And did the swarthy face flush a shade darker beneath its tan? Patty could not be sure, for the next moment he was speaking in a voice under perfect control: "I can well understand your feeling in the matter, Miss Sinclair, and I have nothing of reproach. I do think you are making a mistake. With Vil Holland knowing what he does of your father's operations, time may be a vital factor in the success ofyour undertaking. Let me caution you again against carrying the photograph upon your person."
"Oh, I keep that safely hidden where no one would ever think of searching for it," smiled the girl, and Bethune noted that her eyes involuntarily swept the cabin with a glance.
The man mounted: "I will no longer keep you from your work," he said. "I have arranged to spend the summer in the hills where I shall carry on some prospecting upon my own account. If I can be of any assistance to you—if you should need any advice, or help of any kind, a word will procure it. I shall stop in occasionally to see how you fare. Good-bye." He waved his hand and rode off down the creek where, in a cottonwood thicket he dismounted and watched the girl ride away in the opposite direction, noted that Lord Clendenning swung stealthily, into the trail behind her, and swinging into his saddle rode swiftly toward the cabin.
In his high notch in the hills, Vil Holland chuckled audibly, and catching up his horse, headed for his camp.
The days slipped into weeks, as Patty Sinclair, carefully and methodically traced valleys to their sources, and explored innumerable coulees and ravines that twisted and turned their tortuous lengths into the very heart of the hills. Rock ledges without number she scanned, many with deep cracks and fissures, and many without them. But not once did she find a ledge that could by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as the ledge of the photograph. Disheartened, but not discouraged, the girl would return each evening to her solitary cabin, eat her solitary meal, and throw herself upon her bunk to brood over the apparent hopelessness of her enterprise, or to read from the thumbed and tattered magazines of the dispossessed sheep herder. She rode, now, with a sort of dogged persistence. There was none of the wild thrill that, during the first days of hersearch, she experienced each time she topped a new divide, or entered a new valley.
Three times since she had informed him she would play a lone hand in the search for her father's strike, Bethune had called at the cabin. And not once had he alluded to the progress of her work. She was thankful to him for that—she had not forgotten the hurt in her father's eyes as the taunting questions of the scoffers struck home. Always she had known of the hurt, but now, with the disheartening days of her own failure heaping themselves upon her, she was beginning to understand the reason for the hurt. And, guessing this, Bethune refrained from questioning, but talked gaily of books, and sunsets, and of life, and love, and the joy of living. A supreme optimist, she thought him, despite the half-veiled cynicism that threaded his somewhat fatalistic view of life, a cynicism that but added the necessarysauce piquanteto so abandoned an optimism.
Above all, the man was a gentleman. His speech held nothing of the abrupt bluntness of Vil Holland's. He would appear shortly after her early supper, and was always well upon his way before the late darkness began to obscure the contours of her little valley. An hour's chatupon the doorstep of the cabin and he was gone—riding down the valley, singing as he rode some oldchansonof his French forebears, with always a pause at the cottonwood grove for a farewell wave of his hat. And Patty would turn from the doorway, and light her lamp, and proceed to enjoy the small present which he never failed to leave in her hand—a box of bon-bons of a kind she had vainly sought for in the little town—again, a novel, a woman's novel written by a man who thought he knew—and another time, just a handful of wild flowers gathered in the hills. She ate the candy making it last over several days. She read the book from cover to cover as she lay upon her air mattress, tucked snugly between her blankets. And she arranged the wild flowers loosely in a shallow bowl and watered them, and talked to them, and admired their beauty, and when they were wilted she threw them out, but she did not gather more flowers to fill the bowl, instead she wiped it dry and returned it to its shelf in the cupboard—and wondered when Bethune would come again. She admitted to herself that he interested—at least, amused her—helped her to throw off for the moment the spirit of dull depression that had fastened itself upon her like atangible thing, bearing down upon her, threatening to crush her with its weight.
Always, during these brief visits, her lurking distrust of him vanished in the frank boyishness of his personality. The incidents that had engendered the distrust—the substitution of the name Schultz for Schmidt in the matter of the horse pasture, his abrupt warning against Vil Holland, and his attempt to be admitted into her confidence as a matter of right, were for the moment forgotten in the spell of his presence—but always during her lonely rides in the hills, the half-formed doubt returned. Pondering the doubt, she realized that the principal reason for its continued existence was not so much in the incidents that had awakened it, as in the simple question asked by Vil Holland: "You say your dad told you all about this partnership business?" And in the "Oh," with which he had greeted the reply that she had it from the lips of Bethune. With the realization, her dislike for Vil Holland increased. She characterized him as a "jug-guzzler," a "swashbuckler," and a "ruffian"—and smiled as she recalled the picturesque figure with the clean-cut, bronzed face. "Oh, I don't know—I hate these hills! Nobodyseems sincere excepting the Wattses, and they're—impossible!"
She had borrowed Watts's team and made a second trip to town for supplies, and the check that she drew in payment cut her bank account in half. As before she had offered to take Microby Dandeline, but the girl declined to go, giving as an excuse that "pitcher shows wasn't as good as circusts, an' they wasn't no fights, an' she didn't like towns, nohow."
Upon her return from town Patty stopped at the Thompsons' for dinner where she was accorded a royal welcome by the genial rancher and his wife, and where also, she met the Reverend Len Christie, the most picturesque, and the most un-clerical minister of the gospel she had ever seen. To all appearances the man might have been a cowboy. He affected chaps of yellow hair, a dark blue flannel shirt, against which flamed a scarf of brilliant crimson caught together by means of a vivid green scarab. He wore a roll brimmed Stetson, and carried a six-gun at his belt. A pair of high-heeled boots added a couple of inches to the six feet two that nature had provided him with, and he shook hands as though he enjoyed shaking hands. "I've heard of you, Miss Sinclair,back in town and have looked forward to meeting you on my first trip into the hills. How are my friends, the Wattses, these days? And that reprobate, Vil Holland?" He did not mention that it was Vil Holland who had spoken of her presence in the hills, nor that the cowboy had also specified that she utterly despised the ground he rode on.
To her surprise Patty noticed that there was affection rather than disapprobation in the word reprobate, and she answered a trifle stiffly: "The Wattses are all well, I think: but, as for Mr. Holland, I really cannot answer."
The parson appeared not to notice the constraint but turned to Thompson: "By the way, Tom, why isn't Vil riding the round-up this year? Has he made his strike?"
Thompson grinned: "Naw, Vil ain't made no strike. Facts is, they's be'n some considerable horse liftin' goin' on lately, an' the stockmen's payin' Vil wages fer to keep his eye peeled. He's out in the hills all the time anyhow with his prospectin', an' they figger the thieves won't pay no 'tention to him, like if a stranger was to begin kihootin' 'round out there."
"Have they got a line on 'em at all?"
"Well," considered Thompson. "Not as I know of—exactly. Monk Bethune an' that there Lord Clendennin' is hangin' 'round the hills—that's about all I know."
The parson nodded: "I saw Bethune in town the other day. Do you know, Tom, I believe there's a bad Injun."
"Indian!" cried the girl. "Mr. Bethune is not an Indian!"
Thompson laughed: "Yup, that is, he's a breed. They say his gran'mother was a Cree squaw—daughter of a chief, or somethin'. Anyways, this here Monk, he's a pretty slick article, I guess."
"They're apt to be worse than either the whites or the Indians," Christie explained. "And this Monk Bethune is an educated man, which should make him doubly dangerous. Well, I must be going. I've got to ride clear over onto Big Porcupine. I heard that old man Samuelson's very sick. There's a good man—old Samuelson. Hope he'll pull through."
"You bet he's a good man!" assented Thompson, warmly. "He seen Bill Winters through, when they tried to prove the murder of Jack Bronson onto him, an' it cost him a thousan' dollars. Thedistrick attorney had it in fer Bill, count of him courtin' his gal."
"Yes, and I could tell of a dozen things the old man has done for people that nobody but I ever knew about—in some instances even the people themselves didn't know." He turned to Patty: "Good-by, Miss Sinclair. I'm mighty glad to have met you. I knew your father very well. If you see the Wattses, tell them I shall try and swing around that way on my return." The parson mounted a raw-boned, Roman-nosed pinto, whose vivid calico markings, together with the rider's brilliant scarf gave a most unministerial, not to say bizarre effect to the outfit. "So long, Tom," he called.
"So long, Len! If they's anything we can do, let us know. An' be sure an' stop in comin' back." Thompson watched the man until he vanished in a cloud of dust far out on the trail.
"Best doggone preacher ever was born," he vouchsafed. "He can ride, an' shoot, an' rope, an' everything a man ort to. An' if anyone's sick! Well, he's worth all the doctors an' nurses in the State of Montany. He'll make you git well just 'cause he wants you to. An' they ain't nothin' too much trouble—an' they ain't nowork too hard for him to tackle. There ain't no piousness stickin' out on him fer folks to hang their hat on, neither. He'll mix with the boys, an' listen to the natural cussin' an' swearin' that goes on wherever cattle's handled, an' enjoy it—but just you let some shorthorn start what you might call vicious or premeditated cussin'—somethin' special wicked or vile, an' he'll find out there's a parson in the crowd right quick, an' if he don't shut up, chances is, he'll be spittin' out a couple of teeth. There's one parson can fight, an' the boys know it, an' what's more they know hewillfight—an' they ain't one of 'em that wouldn't back up his play, neither. An' preach! Why he can tear loose an' make you feel sorry for every mean trick you ever done—not for fear of any punishment after yer dead—but just because it wasn't playin' the game. That's him, every time. An' he ain't always hollerin' about hell—hearin' him preach you wouldn't hardly know they was a hell. 'The Bishop of All Outdoors,' they call him—an' they say he can go back East an' preach to city folks, an' make 'em set up an' take notice, same as out here. He's be'n offered three times what he gets here to go where he'd have it ten times easier—but he laughs at 'em.He sure is one preacher that ain't afraid of work!"
As Watts's team plodded the hot miles of the interminable trail Patty's brain revolved wearily about its problem. "I've made almost a complete circle of the cabin, and I haven't found the rock ledge with the crack in it yet—and as for daddy's old map—I've spenthourstrying to figure out what that jumble of letters and numbers mean, I'll just have to start all over again and keep reaching farther and farther into the hills on my rides. Mr. Bethune said I might not recognize the place when I come to it!" she laughed bitterly. "If he knew how that photograph has burned itself into my brain! I can close my eyes and see that rock wall with its peculiar crack, and the rock-strewn valley, and the lone tree—recognizeit! I would know it in the dark!"
Her eyes rested upon the various packages of her load of supplies. "One more trip to town, and my prospecting is done, at least, until I can earn some more money. The prices out here are outrageous. It's the freight, the man told me. Five cents' freight on a penny's worth of food! But what in the world can I do to make money? What can anybody do to make money in this Godforsakencountry? I can't punch cattle, nor herd sheep. I don't see why I had to be agirl!" Resentment against her accident of birth cooled, and her mind again took up its burden of thought. "There is one way," she muttered. "And that is to admit failure and take Mr. Bethune into partnership. He will advance the money and help with the work—and, surely there will be enough for two. And, I'm not so sure but that—" She broke off shortly and felt the hot blood rise in a furious blush, as she glanced guiltily about her—but in all the vast stretch of plain was no human being, and she laughed aloud at the antics of the prairie dogs that scolded and barked saucily and then dove precipitously into their holes as a lean coyote trotted diagonally through their "town."
What was it they had said at Thompson's about Mr. Bethune? Despite herself she had approved the outlandishly dressed preacher with the smiling blue eyes. He was so big, and so wholesome! "The Bishop of All Outdoors," Thompson had called him. She liked that—and somehow the name seemed to fit. Looking into those eyes no one could doubt his sincerity—his every word, his every motion spoke unbounded enthusiasm for hiswork. What was it he had said? "Do you know, Tom, I believe there's a bad Injun." And Thompson had referred to Bethune as "a pretty slick article." Surely, Thompson, whole-souled, generous Thompson, would not malign a man. Here were two men whom the girl knew instinctively she could trust, who stood four-square with the world, and whose opinions must carry weight. And both had spoken with suspicion of Bethune and both had spoken of Vil Holland as one of themselves. "I don't understand it," she muttered. "Everybody seems to be against Mr. Bethune, and everybody seems to like Vil Holland, in spite of his jug, and his gun, and his boorishness. Maybe it's because Mr. Bethune's a—a breed," she speculated. "Why, they even hinted that he's a—a horse-thief. It isn't fair to despise him for his Indian blood. Why should he be made to suffer because his grandmother was an Indian—the daughter of a Cree chief? It sounds interesting and romantic. The people of some of our very best families point with pride to the fact that they are descendants of Pocahontas! Poor fellow, everybody seems down on him—everybody that is, but Ma Watts and Microby. And, as a matter of fact, he appears to better advantage than anyof them, not excepting the very militant and unorthodox 'Bishop of All Outdoors.'"