go with me to-morrow?"

"With you? Then it is you who--"

"Who has planned the whole brilliant scheme? Exactly--the journey part of
it at all events; and I'm not so modest as our friend here. I'll take the
blame of my share, and his, too, if he doesn't speak up for himself.
Here comes your new friend, Dan. Where did you pick him up?"

It was the man Harris, and beside him was the captain. They were talking
with some animation of late Indian raids to the westward.

"I doubt if it was Indians at all who did the thieving," remarked Harris;
"there are always a lot of scrub whites ready to take advantage of war
signals, and do devilment of that sort, made up as reds."

"Oh, yes--some say so! That man Holly used to get the credit of that sort
of renegade work. Handsome Holly he was called once. But now that he's
dead, maybe we'll see he was not the only one to work mischief between the
whites and reds."

"Holly? Lee Holly?" asked Lyster. "Why, didn't we hear a rumor that he
wasn't dead at all, but had been seen somewhere near Butte?"

"I didn't," returned Overton, who was the one addressed, "though it may be
so. He's a very slippery specimen and full of schemes, from what I hear.
But he doesn't seem to range over this territory, so I've never run across
him. It would be like him, though, to play dead when the Government men
grew warm on his trail, and he'd no doubt get plenty of help from his
Indian allies."

Harris was watching him keenly, and the careless honesty of the speaker's
face and tone evidently perplexed him, for he turned with a baffled look
to the girl, who stood with down-dropped eyes, and twisted a spray of
leaves nervously around her fingers. He noticed one quick, troubled glance
she gave Overton, but even to his suspicious eyes it did not seem a regard
given a fellow-conspirator.

"I believe it was the doctor I heard speak of the rumor that Holly was yet
above ground," said Lyster. "The mail came up yesterday, and perhaps he
found it in the papers. Don't think I had heard of the man before. Is he
one of the important people up here?"

"Rather," remarked Overton, "an accomplished crook who has dabbled in
several trades in the Columbia River region. The latest was a wholesale
horse steal from a ranch over in Washington--Indian work, with him as
leader. The regulars from the fort got after them, there was an ugly
fight, and the reds reported Holly as killed. That is the last I heard of
him. You were