p to the Lost Dog to see what it looked like.
The Babes, panic stricken at the intended affront to "Old Man Luck,"
headed him off. Bright had not the least belief in the reason given. He
surveyed them with disfavour.

"I can't take your package," he told them. "Send it out yourself."

"And that old skunk has cleaned up a hundred thousand this month!"
complained Jimmy, pathetically, to the group around the horse trough.
"And he won't even take a pore little five hundred package of dust out
to some suffering bank! I suppose I'll have to cache it in a tomato can
for Johnson's old billy goat to chew up."

"Bring it over and I'll shove it in with mine," suggested California
John.

So it was done. The express, carrying nearly four hundred pounds of gold
dust, set forth over the steep road. In two hours the driver and
messenger sailed in, bung-eyed with excitement. They had been held up by
a single road agent.

"He come out right on that point of rocks where you can see the whole
valley," said the driver in answer to many questions, "right where the
heavy grade is and the thick chaparral. We was busy climbing; and he had
us before we could wink. Made us drop off the dust and 'bout face. He
was a big, tall feller; and had a sawed-off Winchester. Once, when we
stopped, he dropped a bullet right behind us. He must have watched us
all the way to camp."

The camp turned out. As the men passed the Lost Dog someone yelled to
the Babes. George, covered with mud, came to the door of the mill.

"Gee!" said he. "Lucky we saved out that three hundred. I'm powerful
sorry for that suffering bank. I'll join you as soon as I can get Jimmy
up out of the shaft." Before the party had gone a mile they were joined
by the brothers boyishly eager over this new excitement.

The men toiled up the road to where the robbery had taken place. Plainly
to be seen were the marks of the man's boots. The tracks of a single
horse, walking, followed the man.

"He packed off the dust, and he had an almighty big horse to carry it,"
pronounced someone.

They followed the trail. It led a half mile to a broad sheet of rock.
There it disappeared. On one side the bank rose twenty or thirty feet.
On the other it fell away nearly a hundred. On the other side of the
sheet of rock stretched the dusty road unbroken by anything more recent
than the wheel-tracks of the day before. It was as though man and horse
had taken unto themselves wings.

Immediately Brigh