wing and had thrown his mouth agape, a sign that beyond
this he could make no further effort. Five yards--two yards. The
jagged line seemed to come down to meet them. At last, with a final
spring, the great horse trampled it under foot.

Buck heaved a sigh of relief.

"Gee!" he murmured. Then with the wide, black plain stretching before
him, its limits lost in a strange mist, he flung out of the saddle.

He stared about him curiously. Devil's Hill was in no way new to him.
Many a time he had visited its mysterious regions, but always had he
approached it from the prospecting camp, or his own farm, both of
which lay away on the northern side of it.

A wide plateau, nearly two miles in extent, stretched out before him.
It was as flat as the proverbial board, with just one isolated rock
towering upon its bosom. This was the chief object of interest now.
Away in the distance he beheld its ghostly outline, almost lost in the
ruddy atmosphere which, just now, seemed to envelop the whole of that
Western world.

It was a desolate scene. So desolate as to carry a strange sense of
depression to the heart of the horseman. There was not a tree in
sight--nor a single blade of grass. There was nothing but the funereal
black of basaltic rock, of which the hill seemed to be one solid mass.
Such was its desolation that even the horse seemed to be drooping at
the sight of it. It was always the same with Buck. There was an
influence about the place which always left him feeling rather
hopeless. He knew the old Indian stories of superstition. He knew the
awe in which the more ignorant among the white folk held this hill.
But these things left him unaffected. He only regarded it from his own
personal observations, which were not very enlivening.

Apart from the fact that not one atom of vegetation would grow either
upon the surface or slopes of Devil's Hill, no snows in winter had
ever been known to settle upon its uninviting bosom. Long before the
snow touched its surface, however low the temperature of the
atmosphere, however severe a blizzard might be raging--and the Montana
blizzards are notorious for their severity--the snow was turned to
water, and a deluge of rain hissed upon its surface.

Then, too, there was that mystery rock in the distance of the great
plateau. It was one of Nature's little enigmas with which she loves to
puzzle the mind of man. How came it there, shot up in the midst of
that wide, flat stretch of rock? I