ng the rigors of winter as
during the doubtful blessings of summer, stood on the slopes, their
thousand bayonets guarding against trespass where only pressing
necessity could drive a human foot. Sheep-sage, which grew low upon the
ground, and unostentatious and dun, was found here, where no flocks came
to graze; this was the one life-giving thing which sprang from that
blasted spot.

The lowest elevation on the doctor's claim was several hundred feet
above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used
for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature
had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed
nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to
confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on something
good.

His only comfort in those first days was the thought of the money which
he had taken from Shanklin, with the aid of the gambler's own honest
little die. That cash was now safe in the bank at Meander. There was
enough of it, everything else failing, to take him--and somebody--back
to his own place when she was ready to go; enough to do that and get the
automobile, take the world on its vain side, and pull success away from
it. He was able for it now; no doubt of his ability to climb over any
obstacle whatever remained after his wrestling match with the river in
the Buckhorn Canyon. There was no job ahead of him that he could even
imagine, as big as that.

Nobody had come forward to make him an offer for his place. Jerry Boyle
had not appeared, nothing had been seen of the man who accosted him at
the window the morning he filed. Although he had remained in Meander two
days after that event, nobody had approached him in regard to the land
which so many had seemed anxious to get before it came into his
ownership. Boyle he had not seen since the evening Dr. Slavens and Agnes
met him in the gorge riding in such anxious haste.

Perhaps the value of the claim, if value lay in it, was the secret of a
few, and those few had joined forces to starve out his courage and hope.
If nobody came forward with a voluntary offer for the land, it never
would be worth proving up on and paying the government the price asked
for it. All over that country there was better land to be had without
cost.

As the days slipped past and nobody appeared with ten thousand dollars
bulging his pockets, Slavens began to talk to himself among the
solitude