automobile was here, so when Ed
Sorenson was pitched out the folded sheets of paper must have been
propelled from his pocket by the same force and at the same instant.
It hit a rock after flying through the air and slid down into the
crack.

Perhaps it was only a business document; it looked like one. Again
perhaps it told something about his crooked private affairs--about his
schemes for ruining girls, possibly. Very likely, indeed. That seemed
to be about all he engaged himself at. When she found some one who
could read it, she would know for certain. She would just take it
along with her and say nothing about her find until she could have
somebody who understood the writing read it over for her.

In places the typing had stained from dampness, but not seriously. She
could dry out the pages over the kitchen stove at home. So folding the
sheets again, she doubled the document, tied it in her handkerchief
and placed it inside her waist, where it could not be lost. Perhaps
there were other papers. But a further search disclosed none,
whereupon as her father was shouting to her from the cabin to come she
retraced her steps.

When they had drunk their coffee and eaten some of Sorenson's food,
making their meal before the door, they carried the unconscious man
out to the wagon, bearing him in the blanket on which he lay. Other
blankets they spread over him. Johnson also placed at the prostrate
figure's feet the rest of the eatables in the cabin.

"No need to leave this stuff to the pack-rats," said he. "We'll just
consider it a little pay towards fetching him out."

"He ought to be willing to pay you a whole lot more when he learns the
trouble you've been to."

"I wouldn't touch his money if he offered me a thousand dollars; I'd
throw it back in his face. I'm not doing this for pay, or friendship,
or charity; I'm doing it to help Janet Hosmer and because Weir asked
me. If the Sorensons had all the money on earth, they couldn't give me
a penny as between man and man. If they owed it to me, that would be
another matter. They'd pay it if I had to stick a gun down their
throats to make them come across."

"We don't need any of their money, I guess," Mary said.

"Nope. We're poor but we're straight. So we're better off than they
are--richer, if we just look at it that way."

Once during the long drive, as they neared the ranch house, a low moan
came from the form on the straw in the wagonbed. Both Johnson and Mary
lo