of coffee, speared a juicy steak, and eyed his companion
darkly. Mr. Johnson plied knife and fork assiduously, with eyes downcast
and demure.

Stanley Mitchell's smooth young face lined with suspicion.

"When you've been up to some deviltry I can always tell it on you--you
look so incredibly meek and meechin', like a cat eatin' the canary," he
remarked severely. "Thank you for a biscuit. And the sugar! Now what
warlockry is this?" He jerked a thumb at the far-off fires. "What's the
merry prank?"

Mr. Johnson sighed again.

"Deception. Treachery. Mine." He looked out across the desert to the
Gavilan Hills with a complacent eye. "And breach of trust. Mine, again."

"Who you been betrayin' now?"

"Just you. You and your pardner; the last bein' myself. You know them
location papers of ours I was to get recorded at Tucson?"

Stanley nodded.

"Well, now," said Pete, "I didn't file them papers. Something real
curious happened on the way in--and I reckon I'm the most superstitious
man you ever see. So I tried a little experiment. Instead, I wrote out a
notice for that little old ledge we found over on the Gavilan a month
back. I filed that, just to see if any one was keeping cases on us--and I
filed it the very last thing before I left Tucson: You see what's
happened." He waved his empty coffee-cup at the campfires. "I come
right back and we rode straight to Ironspring. But there's been people
ridin' faster than us--ridin' day and night. Son, if our copper claims
had really been in the Gavilan, instead of a-hundred-and-then-some long
miles in another-guess direction--then what?"

"We'd have found our claim jumped and a bunch to swear they'd been
working there before the date of our notices; that they didn't find the
scratch of a pick on the claim, no papers and no monument--that's what
we'd have found."

"Correct! Pass the meat."

"But we haven't told a soul," protested Stanley. "How could any one know?
We all but died of thirst getting back across the desert--the wind rubbed
out our tracks; we laid up at Soledad Springs a week before any one saw
us; when we finally went in to Cobre no one knew where we had been, that
we had found anything, or even that we'd been looking for anything. How
could any one know?"

"This breakfast is getting cold," said Pete Johnson. "Good grub hurts no
one. Let's eat it. Then I'll let a little ray of intelligence filter into
your darkened mind."

Breakfast finished, Stan piled the