(The Girla
Horse and
i aDog
By
FRANCIC LYNDE
Copyright by Charles Scribner Sons
Loy
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(Continued).
SYNOPSIS.
CHAPTER I—Under his grandfather's
will, Stanford Broughton, society idler,
finds his share of the estate, valued at
something like $440,000, lies in a “safe re-
pository,’”” latitude and longitude de-
scribed, and that is all. It may be identi-
fled by the presence nearby of a brown-
baired, blue-eyed girl, a piebald horse,
and a dog with a split face, half black
and half white. Stanford at first regards
the bequest as a joke, but after considera-
tion sets out to find his legacy.
CHAPTER II.—On his way to Denver,
the city nearest the meridian described
in his grandfather's will, Stanford hears
from a fellow traveler a story having to
do with a flooded mine.
CHAPTER III.—Thinking things over,
he begins to imagine there may be some-
thing in his grandfather's bequest worth
while, his idea finally centering on the
possibility of a mine, as a ‘safe reposi-
tory.” Recalling the narrative on the
train, he ascertains that his fellow trav-
eler was a mining engineer, Charles Bul-
lerton. Bullerton refuses him_informa-
tion, but from other sources Broughton
learns enough to make him proceed to
Placerville, in the Red desert.
CHAPTER IV.—On the station platform
at Atropia, just as the train pulls out,
Stanford sees what appear to be the iden-
tical horse and dog described in his
grandfather’s will. Impressec, he leaves
the train at the next stop, Angels. There
he finds that Atropia was originally
Placerville, his destination. Unable to
secure a conveyance at once to take him
to Placerville, Broughton seizes a con-
struction car and escapes, leaving the im-
pression on the town marshal, Beasley,
that he is slightly demented.
CHAPTER V.—Pursued, he abandons
the car, which is wrecked, and escapes on
foot. In the darkness, he is overtaken
‘by a girl on horseback, and THE dog.
After he explains his presence, she in-
vites him to her home, at the Old Cinna-
bar mine, to meet her father.
CHAPTER VI.—Broughton’s hosts are
Hiram Twombly, caretaker of the mine,
and his daughter Jeanie. Seeing the girl,
Stanford is satisfied he has located his
property, but does not reveal his identity.
CHAPTER VIL—Next morning, with
Hiram, he visits the mine. Hiram asks
him to look over the machinery, and he
does so, glad of an excuse to be near
Jeanie, in whom he has become inter-
ested, and he engages in the first real
work he has ever done.
CHAPTER VIIL.—Broughton and Hiram
started, but are unable to
make an impression on the water. Bul-
lerton, apparently an old friend of the
Twomblys, visits the mine. He offers
to drain it ir consideration of Brough-
ton’s giving hm fifty-one per cent of the
property. Stanford refuses Then Buller-
ton offers to buy the mine outright for
$50,000. It had cost Broughton’'s grand-
father more than half a million. Stan-
ford again refuses.
CHAPTER IX.—Jeanie cautions Brough-
ton against selling the mine, under any
circumstances, and, apparently in a spirit
of mischief, allows him to kiss her. After
a conversation with Daddy Hiram,
Broughton decides he will stick to the |
property. |
The longer I thought about it, the
larger the conviction grew that no
such expensive expedient was to be
resorted to. Bullerton, or his backers,
or both, knew some other and far
cheaper and more expeditious way of
getting vid of the water. Sitting on a
big rock that had in some former earth
convulsion tumbled from the broken
cliffs above the mine, 1 gave the me-
chanical fraction of my brain (it was
a small fraction and sadly under-de-
veloped) free rein.
Two possibilities suggested them-
selves. A siphon, a big pipe, starting
at the bottom of the shaft and leading
out over the top and down the moun-
tain to a point lower than the shaft
bottom, would, after it was once |
started, automatically discharge a
stream of its own bigness, whatever
that should be. But the cost of over
a mile of such pipe was beyond my
means: and if two six-inch pumps
driven night and day had failed to
malke any impression upon the flood,
what could be expected of a siphon
which. in the nature of things, couldn’t
be much bigger than an ordinary |!
street water main?
The other possibility was even less
hopeful. It was-the driving of a short |
tunnel, which Daddy and I might un-
dertake without additional help, from |
the level of the high bench straight in
to an intersection with the mine shaft.
This, I estimated, might tap the water
at a point possibly twenty feet below |
its present level in the shaft. Its suc-
cess, as I saw at once, would depend
entirely upon the location and volume |
of the underground lake which was |
supposed to be supplying the flood. If:
this reservoir were shallow and high |
in the mountain, the short tunnel
might drain it. If it were deep and |
low, nothing would be accomplished. |
The question was still hanging hope-
lessly up in the air when I made my
way around to the mine buildings by
the left-hand gulch path, sneaked in
and began to shuck myself into Dad-
dy’s extra pair of overalls; just for
what, I hadn’t the least idea; only 1
needed to be doing something to keep
me from going completely dotty in the
guessing contest.
By this time, as I knew, they would
be getting up from breakfast in the
cabin across the dump head, which
would most likely be Bullerton’s cue
to come over and ride me some more.
When I looked out in sour anticipa-
tion, here he came, smoking one of his
high-priced cigars and swaggering a
bit, as he always did in walking.
“This is your thirty-thousand-dollar
day, Broughton,” he tossed at me as
soon as he stepped over the threshold
of the shart house door; but I fancied
I could notice that, some way, he
didn’t seem quite so chipper and care-
less as he had the day before. i
“See here,” I ripped out; “what’s!
the use? You can’t buy this mine at
any price! It's not in the market and
it isn’t going to be. Not in a thousand
years!”
«But see here; what's the use ot
butting your head against a stone wall?
You're stuck, world without end, and
you know it. This flooded hole in the
ground is of no more use to you than
a pair of spectacles to a blind man!”
“Perhaps not; ‘’tis a poor thing, but
mine own.’ I guess I can keep it as
a souvenir if I feel like it, can’t I?”
“Oh, h—1!” he gritted. and turning
on his heel went away.
After he had gone I patted myself
on the back a bit for not losing my
temper and then, just to have an ex-
cuse for staying away- from the cabin
and the Bullerton vicinity, I made fires
under the boilers and got up steam. In
the former pumping spasm Daddy and
I had operated only the two big cen-
trifugals, ignoring the deep-well pumps
designed to lift the water from the
lower levels of the mine.
Just to try something that we hadn’t |
tried before, I got steam on the deep |
wellers, and soon found that the
machinery, which we hadn't taken |
down in the general overhauling, :
needed tinkering before it would be
safe to run it. Banking the boiler
fires, I went at the job single-handed |
and managed to wear out the livelong
day at it.
It took me all the afternoon and
then some to get the machinery cleaned
and tinkered up and reassembled. In
pawing over the supplies in the mine
storeroom—stuff left by the former op-
erators—we had found an acetylene
flare torch and a can of carbide and I
rigged the torch so that I could go on
working after dark.
It was along about nine o'clock when
1 got the deep-wells ready to run and
freshened up the fires and turned the
steam on. In curious contrast to the
care which had beep taken to provide
a discharge outlet for the centrifugals,
the Cornish pumps had merely an iron
trough which ran to a ditch leading
down to the bench below the mine
buildings. After a few minutes of the
clanking and banging, the water began
to come. It was horribly smelling
stuff, thick and discolored; evidences
sufficient that it was coming from the
bottom of the mine. The two pumps
together were lifting about an eight-
inch stream, and it occurred to me at
once that if I could set the centrifu-
gals going at the same time, the mass
attack might accomplish what the
piece-meal assault couldn’t.
Throwing in the clutch that drove
the big rotaries, I ran up against what
Daddy would have called a “circum-
stance.” There wasn’t power enough
to drive both sets of pumps coupled
in together; at least, not with the
steam pressure the boilers were car-
rying. Thinking to get more power by
pushing the fires a bit harder, I went
to the detached boiler room to stoke
up, leaving the deep wells clanging
away in’ the shafthouse. I had fired
two of the furnaces and was at work
on the third when a series of grind-
ing crashes in the machinery sent me
flying to find out what was going
wrong.
What was happening—what had al- |
ready happened—swwvas a plenty. As 1
have said, the great Cornish water-
lifters were driven through a train
of gearing. When I reached the scene,
the steam engine was still running
smoothly, but the pumps had stopped.
‘The reason didn’t have to be looked
for with a microscope. The gear-train
was a wreck, with one of the wheels
smashed into bits, and half of the
cogs stripped from its mesh-mate, if
that's what youd call it.
Mechanically I stopped the engine
and went to view the remains. The
deep-wells were done for—there was
no question about that; they'd never
run again until a new set of gears
should be installed. That much deter-
mined, 1 began to look for the cause
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i
of the calamity. Naturally, I supposed
that a cracked cog in one of the
vheels had given way, and with this
for a starter, the general smash would
follow as a matter of course. But
a careful and even painful scrutiny of
the wreckage failed to reveal the cog |
with the ancient fracture. Bach break
was new and fresh and clean; there
| wasn't a siga of an old flaw in any
one of them.
I think I must have knelt there
under the gear train for a half-hour or
more, handling the fragments of iron
and fitting them together. It was like
a child’s broken-block puzzle, and af-
ter a time I was able to lay all the
larger bits out upon the floor in their
proper relation to one another. It was
in the ground-up debris remaining that
I found something which suddenly |
made me see red. Battered into shape-
lessness, but still clearly recognizable,
were the crushed disjecta membra of
our twelve-inch monkey-wrench!
1 tried not to go off the handle in a
fit of mad rage. With a sort of forced
calm I considered every beam and pro-
jecting timber where I might incau-
tiously have left the wrench, and from
which it might have jarred off to fall
into the gears. There was no such
chance. I had used the wrench in re-
assembling the machimery, but now
that I came to recall all the circum-
stances, I distinctly remembered hav-
ing put it, together with the other
tools, on the little work bench back
of the engine. The alternative con-
clusion was, therefore, fairly inevit-
able. While I was firing the furnaces,
somebody—and doubtless somebody
who had been watching for the oppor-
tunity—had taken advantage of the
moment when my back was turned and
had thrown the wrench into the gears.
It was the final straw. There was
only one person on the Cinnabar res-
ervation who could have any motive
for wrecking my machinery ; and while
I was banking the fires and setting
things in order for the night. I charted
my course, as the navigators say. The
dawn of another day, I told myself,
would schedule the ultimate limit. Un-
less he should prove to be a good bit
quicker with his gun than I was witn
my fists, Bullerton was due to get
the man-handling he seemed to be ac.
ing for; and beyond that, he’d quit
the Cinnabar, if I should have to tie
him on his horse and flog the beast
half-way to Atropia.
It was with this most unchristian
design seething and boiling in my
wrain that I finally went over to the
cabin, let myself in, and climbed
stealthily up the loft ladder to my
blankets, and the next thing I knew,
it was broad daylight, the sun was
shining in at the little window over
the head of my bunk, and from the
kitchen at the rear a juicy and most
appetizing odor of frying ham was
wafting itself up through the cracks
in the unchinked walls of my cubicle.
CHAPTER XI.
An Arctic Bath.
It’s an old saying that coming events
have a knack of foreshadowing them- i
selves. While I was struggling into
: my clothes and reviving tliat over-
Bullerton the minute I should lay eyes
upon him, it struck me all at once that
the house was curiously quiet. To be
sure, somebody was stirring and the
We made sure, without the loss of
a moment ; looking in my loft sleeping-
place and in the mine buildings. The
deed was gone, safely enough, and we
both agreed that Bullerton had had
plenty of chances to steal it. Wearing
overclothes while I was working about
the machinery, I had often left ns
coat hanging in the cabin. As a mat-
ter of fact, I hadn't worn it at all on
the previous day.
«Well, Daddy,” said I, after the pro-
longed search had proved futile,
«where does this leave me?”
Threshing the facts out, we soon
found where it left me. Grandfather
Jasper, as you may remember, had
made no mention of the mine, or, in-
deed, of any legacy to me in his will
as it had been probated; there was no
need of it because he had already
deeded the Cinnabar to me, and at the
time of his death it was no longer
among his assets. Moreover, his law-
yers had told Bullerton (according to
Bullerton’s story told me in the Pull-
man smokeroom) that there was no
record of any mining transaction
whatever in his papers. Therefore, in
you hain’t lost it out o’ your pocket?” |
the absence of the memorandum which :
my grandfather had given
Percy—and which Percy had doubt-
| Jess carried with him to China—there
night determination to have it out with
was nothing but the deed to show for
"my ownership; absolutely nothing.
At that, the loss of the deed wouldn't |
breakfast was cooking, -but the pre-
monition that something had happened |
was strong upon me when I descended :
the ladder.
fast on the table.
“It’s just you and me for it, this
mornin’, Stannie,” he muttered, laying
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have been fatal if the document had
veen properly recorded. It hadn’t
been. And now, with the unrecorded
deed gone, there was nothing to prove
that I had ever owned the Cinnabar.
| The loss was total—with no insur-
In the living room I found a mighty |
sober-faced old Daddy putting break- |
ance.
Daddy Hiram was shaking his head
| sorrowfully after we had run this last
bunch of straw through the threshing | :
' sympathy and concern, mixed up with
plates for two; and his mild old eyes !
looked as if they were about to take |
a bath.
“What!” I exclaimed. “Has Buller-
ton gone?”
“Uh-huh; bright and early—'fore
day, I reckon; leastwise, I didn’t hear
him when he went.”
some line of action.
| county seat, and the obvious first step i
ould have been for me to h ‘
would m £0 there rd have been a gone goose. I was just
machine.
Cousin |
, Framed in the Square of Daylight |
With things looking as blue as the
bluest whetstone that ever clicked
upon scythe, we tried to settle upon
Copah was the
for a search in the county records for
| evidence of the sale of the mine to my |
«But where's Jeanie? She isn’t sick,
is she?”
He shook his head dolefully.
“No; she—she’s gone, too.”
“Not with Bullerton?’ I gasped.
“Jt sure does look that-away, Stan-
nie.
She left a 1°’ note on the table
“No, She’s Gone, Too.”
for me, a-tellin’ me not to worry none,
and sayin’ I needn’t look for her till
i 1 saw her ag’in.”
At first I could hardly believe my
own ears. It was so incredibly out of
keeping with Jeanie as I had been
idealizing her.
“Are you going after them?” I de-
manded.
“What for?’ was the despondent
cuery. “’'Tain’t a morsel o’ use, any
wa) you look at it.
grandfather. But the minute I should
, show myself on the railroad, I'd be
_ nabbed for the theft of that infernal
inspection car.
Jeanie’s a wom- |
an growed, and she don’t have to have |
' have been sunk in caving material
the old daddy say she can, 'r she
mustn't. Besides, they was probably
pitchin’ out to catch one o’ the early
trains—there’s one each way, east and
west—and them trains ’ve been gone
a couple ¢ hours.”
Daddy had done his best with the
breakfast, but I don’t recall any meal
of my life that ever came So near
choking me. I told Daddy about the
smashing of the machinery, and the
proof I had that it had been a piece
of sabotage.
“Reckon maybe he allowed you'd find
out he done it and try a dogfall ’r
somethin’ with him to pay him back?”
Daddy queried.
«I don’t know,” I confessed.
Daddy offered to go
in my place, but that alternative didn’t
appeal to me at all. I knew perfecily
well how helpless he’d be in any such
lawyerlike search as would have to be
made in the county recorder’s office.
Could See Daddy Hanging Over the
Mouth of the Pit.
pirate would have dared to. It was
keen torture, but it turned the trick,
and by the time I was able to breathe
comfortably again, I had acquired a
beautiful spanksd blush where I hac |
been blue—all but the great bruise. !
ring-shaped, where the suction pipe
had bit me.
Of course, Daddy was chock full of
a good bit of curiosity.
“One of the suction pipes,” I ex-
plained, beginning t» crawl back into
my clothes. “I was foolish enough to
, get under it and it grabbed and held
me. If you hadn’t stopped the pumps
about all in, as it was.”
“Well, you found out the pumps are
suckin’ all right, anyhow,” he re-
marked.
“They sure are; youd think so if
youd been where I was.” Then I be-
gan to recall some of those mixed and
mingled impressions I had gathered.
“what kind of soil is there under this
, floor, Daddy?” I asked.
Being stopped off short in every
other direction, we finally gravitated
over to the shaft-house and went to |
work in an aimless sort of fashion
gathering up the wreckage of the
smashed gear train and putting things
«hipshape again. With steam up, we
turned the machinery over a few
times, just to see that everything was
in working order again, and 1 threw in
the clutch of the centrifugals, merely
for the satisfaction of hearing the
flood rushing through the outlet. When
the pumps were going at full speed I
went to look down the shaft. As be-
fore, when we had run the pumps for
a week on end, there was a slight dis-
turbance of the water, but nothing
more.
gauge showed no change in the level.
Suddenly a freak notion seized me
that I'd like to know just what was
going on down in those black depths
into which the suction pipes of the
big pumps led.
«Daddy, I'm going to try to find out
something,” I declared and forthwith |
began to strip my clothes off. “We've
seen the water coming out at the oth-
er end of things, and now, by George,
I mean to make sure that it’s going in
at this end.”
He didn’t try very hard to dissuade
me, and a minute or so later I was
crawling down the shaft ladder in the
habiliments that old Mother Nature
gave me. It was my first exploration
of the shaft, and I was surprised to
find it so well and tightly timbered ;
“poxed” is the better word, since the
timbering was really a substantial
wooden box built within the square
outlinings of the pit. Common sense
told me that this must have been done
to prevent the caving in of the sides:
and afterward I remembered wonder-
ing, at the time, that the shaft should
when the remainder of the bench upon
which the buildings stood appeared to
pe little else than solid rock.
By feeling with a free foot I could
determine that the pump suction pipes
went on still farther, and then the
real adventure began. The ladder
suddenly gave out, quit, ended. There
were no more rounds below the one
upon which I was standing. That be-
ing the case, there was nothing for it
| but to dive, feet foremost, and taking
I went on eating in silence, or rath- |
er trying to eat, and turning over the
puzzling and bad-tasting questionings
in my mind. How could Jeanie go oft
with Bullerton, knowing him to be the !
scamp he was? And why, if she had
been meaning all along to do this thing,
had she blocked his game by telling
me that I wasn't to sell him the Cin-
nabar?
It was in the midst of these reflec:
tions that I chanced to feel in the coat
pocket where I had been carrying the
deed turned over to me by Daddy
Hiram; and for the second time that
morning I nearly choked. The pocket
was empty!
“What's hit you now, son?’ Daddy
inquired ; seeing my jaw drop, 1 sup-
pose.
“The last thing there was in the box
that could fall cut and hit me,” I gur-
gled. “Bullerton has stolen my deed
to the Cinnabar!”
“The mischief he has! Plum sure
a deep breath, I let go of the ladder
and began to swim downward. Almost
before I realized it I was fighting des-
| perately for dear life. One of the big
suction pipes had taken hold of a foot
and leg, like a tentacle of an enor-
mous octopus, and I was unable to get
loose.
After all, it was Daddy Hiram who
saved my life. Suddenly the thunder
of the pumps, magnified a thousand-
fold for me in that icy pit of death,
stopped short and the mechanical
squid let go of my leg. With lungs
®ursting I shet to the surface and
weakly clutched the ladder. Framed
in the square of daylight a dozen feet
overhead I could see Daddy hanging
over the mouth of the pit; saw him
and heard his shouted words: “Freeze
to the ladder, boy—I'm a-comin’ down
after ye!”
1 was freezing all right, in both
senses of the word, but I found breath
| to warn him back, and presently man-
aged to crawl up the ladder and roll
out upon the shafthouse floor. In-
stantly the old man pounced upon me,
buffeting, slapping and rubbing, maul-
ing me worse than any Turkish-bath
My makeshift float-and-pulley |
| 4 man is fighting for his life ten or |
twelve feet under water, pipe-dreams |
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“Huh!” he snorted; “what soil there
is on this here ledge you could mighty
near put in your eye, I reckon. 'Tain’t
nothin’ but rock, and blame’ hard rock, |
at that.”
“Phat was my notion. But if the
shaft is in rock, why did they box it
so strongly with timber? Surely there
wouldn't be any danger of a cave in
solid stone.”
“Well, now, I'm dinged!”
turned, musingly.
he re-
never once come to me to wonder about
that!” .
Speaking of the wooden bulkheading |
renewed that other impression, or rath-
er two of them; one of having the feel-
ing that I was shut in a tight box at
the moment of the fiercest struggling,
and the other of fancying that I had
felt a swirling inrush of the liquid ice
as well as the sucking outrush. But
the recollection was so confused that
1 attached no importance to it. When
are nothing to the things he can im-
agine.
It was while we were sitting at the
shaft-house door, hammering away at
the old puzzle of why the water level
never varied so much as a fraction of
an inch in the shaft, in wet seasons or
dry—as Daddy testified it never did—
and why the subtraction of two six-
inch streams at a velocity sufficient to
stir up a veritable whirlpool at the
suction intakes should make no im-
pression upon it, that I began to no-
tice the queer actions of the pie-faced
collie, Barney. First he would come
and stick his cold nose into my hand;
then he'd trot over to the cabin and
back, and maybe loaf 2 little way down
the road toward the bench level. Com-
ing around to the shaff-house again,
he'd sit beside Daddy Hiram, yawning
and panting as if he were waiting in
patiently for us to stop talking aud
pay some attention to him.
“Poor old Barney's homesick, and 1
don’t blame him,” I said. “Tm feoliny
a good bit that way, myself, Daddy”
Then to the dog: “Come here, old
boy!”
The collie came to lick my hand. an
while I was petting bim I found a
pretty bad gash just behind one of his
ears.
“See here, Daddy,”
“the dog's hurt!”
We examined the wound and decided
at once that it was not a bite. It was
a bruised cut, looking as if it had been
made by some blunt instrument or
weapon. I had a hot-flash vision of
Bullerton kicking the dog with his
iron-shod heel in an attempt to drive
him back home, and it was so real that
I couldn't shake it off.
When it began to grow dusk in the
ghaft-house we shut up shop and went
over to the cabin to cook our supper.
The dog went along, but evidently with
reluctance. While we were crossing
the dump head he turned back and
once more started off down the road
toward the bench below, but when he
found that we were not following him
he came to heel again, Still, neither
of us had dog sense enough to guess
what was the matter with him.
Daddy Hiram and 1, being merely
stupid humans, were commenting upon
his queer actions, and laying them to
Jeanie’s absence, when again the dog
started off down the road, looking
I broke out;
| back and barking when he found that
| we were still sitting on the doorstep.
At that, since even solid ivory can be
“Long as I've been !
monkeyin’ ‘round mines and such, $1
penetrated if the would-be driller of it
stays on the job long enough, we final-
ly caught on.
“Say, Stannie!—he’s a-tryin’ to tell
us to come on!” Daddy exclaimed,
! starting to his feet. “Methuselah-to-
gracious! did it have to take us a hul:
endurin’ afternoon to figger out that
much dog-talk?”
“It looks that way,” I admitted; buf
now, having “figgered” it out, we made
no delay. Daddy got his rifle and cart-
ridge-belt, and told me to take Jeanie's
pistol for myself—which I did. And
thus equipped we took the trail, In-
dian-filing down the mountain road in
the darkness, Daddy Hiram. with his
gun in the crook of his left arm, set-
ting the pace, and the collie running
on aliead to point the way.
CHAPTER XII.
Arcund Robin Hood's Barn.
After we had covered possibly two
of the four miles between the Cinna-
bar and the railroad station, the dog
| branched off to the left along the
‘ mountain on a road that was little
better than a bridle path through the
forest. and which, for the time, kept
its level on the slope, neither ascend-
ing nor descending.
“How about it, Daddy?’ I asked.
“Where does this trail go?”
“Give it time eneugh, it cones out
| at the old Haversack, on Greaser
| mountain.”
“Ends there, you mean?”
“you said it; far as I know, it eads
there.”
“What is the Haversack?”
“It ain’t nothin’, now. Used to be a
gold prospect eight 'r ten year ago.
i Never got far enough along to be a
| ine, they tell me.”
It was certainly singular that the
| dog should be leading us to an aban-
' doned mining project, but Barney
seemed to know perfectly well where
he was going.
In one of the gulch headings there
was a patch of wash sand in what was,
in wet weather, a runway for water,
but which was now only a streamless
ravine with a few damp Spots in it
Here Daddy called a halt, and while
the dog sat down and yawned at us
and otherwise manifested ‘his impa-
tience at the delay, the old .nan gath-
ered a few pine-cones and twigs,
struck a match and lighted a fire, cau-
tioning me meanwhile not to walk on
the damp sand paten.
I hadn't the slightest idea of what
he was driving at, and he didn’t ex-
plain; but after the fire had blazed
up enough to light the surroundings a
bit, he went down upon his hands and
‘ knees and began to give an imitation
. of a man hunting for a dropped piece
of money. “It's sort 0’ queer. J eanie’s
been here, and the dog’s been back and
across a couple 0 times, 4s you can
' gee. But Bullerton hasn't crossed here.
! There's only the one set o’ tracks.”
We made a wider search, with a
dead pine branch for a torch, but
| found no other tracks; in fact, the
| gulch was gullied so deeply above and
below that there is nO other prac-
' ticable crossing-place for a horse. If
| Jeanie had headed for the gulch—and
| the hoof prints in the sand, and
| Daddy's identification of them seemed
| to prove this pas. any question of
| doubt—she had headed it alone. jut
| why had she been riding alone into
| the depths of this uninhabited moun-
| tain wilderness?
Calm and self-contained as he usual-
| 1y was, 1 could see, or rather feel, that
| Daddy Hiram was growing increasing-
| ly nervous as we pushed on. I didn’t
| biame him; so far from it, I was shar-
| ing the nervousness in full measure.
What were we going to find at the
end of the trail?
It must have been at least two miles
beyond the damp sand patch that the
dim trail we had been following ended
abruptly at the abandoned mining
claim spoken of by Daddy Hiram—the
Haversack. The starlight was bright
enough to show us what there was to
be seen, which wasn't much; a couple
of turlab'e-down shacks, a shed that
nad probably been the prospectors’
blacksmith shop, and a tunnel mouth
+hat had once been securely boarded
np, but from which the bulkheading
was now partly fallen away.
Once more Daddy hunted for a dead
pine branch and lighted a torch. The
shacks were empty, of course, and
while we did not go into the tunnel,
| we could see, through the broken bulk-
heading, that it was half filled with
caved-in earth and broken stone. Un-
derfoot there was only the coarse
gravel of the tunnel spoil, and a full
troop of cavalry might have passed
gver it without leaving any visible
trail. Worse than all, Barney, the pie-
faced collie, appeared now to be com-
pletely at fault. He was running
around in circles with his nose to the
ground; a pretty plain indication that
he had lost the trail.
“I'll be bat-clawed and owl-hooted
if I know what-all to do next,” Daddy
puzzled.
He hadn't any the best of me there,
and it was precisely at this point that
the split-faced dog took it into his
head to add another snarl to the knot-
ted tangle. After galloping around all
over the place half a dozen times,
sniffing at everything in sight, he had
finally come to a stand with his nose
at a crack in the tunnel boarding. The
next instant he had leaped through
the hole where the planks had fallen
away, and presently we heard him
whining and scratching behind the
bulkhead.
1 don’t know about Daddy Hiram’s
heart, but I do know that mine was
doing flip-flaps and back somersaults
when we ran up to see what the dog
had found in the tunnel. For a half-
second after Daddy thrust his torch
through the hole I was afraid to look
scared stiff at the thought of what 1
(Continued on Page 6, Col. 1.)