il, and he read it
as one might turn the pages of a book. He saw how a rabbit had scurried,
running hard, for the prints of the hind feet planted far ahead of those
on the forepaws. There was reason in her haste, for here the pads of a
racing coyote had dug deeply into a bit of soft ground. The sign of both
rabbit and coyote veered suddenly, and again the trail told the reason
clearly--the big print of a lobo's paw, that gray ghost which haunts
the ranges with the wisest brain and the swiftest feet in the West. Vic
Gregg grinned with excitement; fifty dollars' bounty if that scalp were
his! But the story of the trail called him back with the sign of some
small animal which must have traveled very slowly, for in spite of
the tiny size of the prints, each was distinct. The man sniffed with
instinctive aversion and distrust for this was the trail of the skunk,
and if the last of the seven sleepers was out, it was spring indeed. He
raised his cudgel and thwacked the burro joyously.

"Get on, Marne," he cried. "We're overdue in Alder."

Marne switched her tail impatiently and canted back a long ear to
listen, but she did not increase her pace; for Marne had only one
gait, and if Vic occasionally thumped her, it was rather by way of
conversation than in any hope of hurrying their journey.

Chapter II. Grey Molly

If her soul had been capable of enthusiasm, Marne could have made the
trip on schedule time, but she was a burro good for nothing except to
carry a pack well nigh half her own weight, live on forage that might
have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought.
Speed was not in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon
rather than morning when Gregg, pointing his course between the ears of
Marne, steered her through Murphy's Pass and came out over Alder.
There they paused by mutual consent, and the burro flicked one long
ear forward to listen to the rushing of the Doane River. It filled the
valley with continual murmur, and just below them, where the brown,
white-flecked current twisted around an elbow bend, lay Alder tossed
down without plan, here a boulder and there a house. They seemed
marvelously flimsy structures, and one felt surprise that the weight the
winter snow had not crushed them, or that the Doane River had not sent
a strong current licking over bank and tossed the whole village crashing
down the ravine. One building was very much like other, but Gregg's
familiar e