e tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he
say. But Ba'teese--"

"What?"

The trapper was silent a moment. At last:

"You like her, eh?"

"Medaine?"

"No--the other."

"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my
one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and
testified for me. What were you going to say?"

"Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You
go Boston to-night?"

"Yes."

And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor
car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen
frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and
the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of
miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the
highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries
were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the
straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in
Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the
mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing
that would give him back his birthright.

Weazened, wrinkle-faced little Jenkins met him at the office, to stare
in apparent surprise, then to rush forward with well-simulated
enthusiasm.

"You're back, Mr. Houston! I'm so glad. I didn't know whether to send
the notice out to you in Colorado, or wire you. It just came
yesterday."

"The notice? Of what?"

"The M. P. & S. L. call for bids. You've heard about it."

But Houston shook his head. Jenkins stared.

"I thought you had. The Mountain, Plains and Salt Lake Railroad. I
thought you knew all about it."

"The one that's tunneling Carrow Peak? I've heard about the road, but
I didn't know they were ready for bids for the western side of the
mountain yet. Where's the notice?"

"Right on your desk, sir."

Abstractedly, Houston picked it up and glanced at the
specifications,--for railroad ties by the million, for lumber, lathes,
station-house material, bridge timbers, and the thousands of other
lumber items that go into the making of a road. Hastily he scanned the
printed lines, only at last to place it despondently in a pocket.

"Millions of dollars," he murmured. "Millions--for somebody!"

And Houston could not help feeling that it was for the one man he
hated, Fred Thayer. The specifications called for f