--girl!"

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TRACK IN THE FOREST.

Their camp was about a mile from the Kootenai River, and close to a stream
of depth sufficient to carry a canoe; while, a little way north of their
camp, a beautiful spring of clear water gurgled out from under a little
bank, and added its portion to the larger stream that flowed eastward to
the river.

There was a little peculiarity about the spring, which made it one to
remember--or, rather, two to remember, for it was really a twin, and its
sister stream slipped from the other side of the narrow ledge and ran
north for a little way, and then turned to the east and emptied into the
Kootenai, not a hundred yards from the stream into which its mate had
run.

The two springs were not twenty feet apart, and lay direct north and south
from each other. Then their wide curves, in opposite directions, left
within their circle a tract of land like an island, for the streams
bounded it entirely except for that narrow neck of rock and soil joining
it to the bigger hills to the west.

It was in the vicinity of the two springs that the rude sketch of Harris
bade them search; but more definite directions than that he had not given.
He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding
that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached
the larger stream, navigable for a mile, they concluded to move their
tents there, for no lovelier place could be found.

It was 'Tana and Overton who tramped over the lands where the streams lay,
and did their own prospecting for location. He was surprised to find her
knowledge of the land so accurate. The crude drawing was as a solved
problem to her; she never once made a wrong turn.

"Well, I've thought over it a heap," she said, when he commented on her
clever ideas. "I saw that marked tree as we went down to the Ferry, and I
remembered where it was; and the trail is not hard if you only get started
on it right. It's getting started right that counts--ain't it, Dan?"

There seemed fewer barriers between them in the free, out-of-door life,
where no third person's views colored their own. They talked of Lyster,
and missed him; yet Dan was conscious that if Lyster were with them, he
would have come second instead of first in her confidences, and her
friendly, appealing ways.

Whether he trusted her or not, she did not know. He had not asked a
question as to how that survey of the land cam