d only a hazardous trail threaded the Gorge
which had once been a highway.

Wilhelmina gazed up the valley and sighed again, for since that terrific
cloudburst she had been stranded in Jail Canyon like a piece of
driftwood tossed up by the flood. Nothing happened to her, any more than
to the pinon logs which the waters had wedged high above the stream, and
as she returned home down the Gorge she almost wished for another flood,
to float them and herself away. No one came by there any more, the trail
was so poor, and yet her father still clung to the mine; but a flood
would either fill up the Gorge with debris or make even him give up
hope. She sank down by the cool pool and put her feet in the water,
dabbling them about like a wilful child; but at a shout from below she
rose up a grown woman, for she knew it was Dusty Rhodes.

He came on up the creekbed with his burros on the trot, hurling clubs at
the laggards as he ran; and when they stopped short at the sight of
Wilhelmina he almost rushed them over her. But a burro is a creature of
lively imagination, to whom the unknown is always terrible; and at a
fresh outburst from Dusty the whole outfit took to the brush, leaving
him face to face with his erstwhile partner.

"Oh, hello, hello!" he called out gruffly. "Say, did Hungry Bill go
through here? He was jest down to Blackwater, buying some grub at the
store, and he paid for it with rock that was _half gold_! So git
out of the road, my little girl--I'm going up to prospect them hills!"

"Don't you call me your little girl!" called back Billy angrily. "And
Hungry Bill hasn't got any mine!"

"Oh, he ain't, hey?" mocked Dusty, leaving his burros to browse while he
strode triumphantly up to her. "Then jest look at _that_, my--my
fine young lady! I got it from the store-keeper myself!"

He handed her a piece of green and blue quartz, but she only glanced at
it languidly. The memory of his perfidy on a previous occasion made her
long to puncture his pride, and she passed the gold ore back to him.

"I've seen that before," she said with a sniff, "so you can stop driving
those burros so hard. It came from Wunpost's mine."

"Wunpost!" yelled Dusty Rhodes, his eyes getting big; and then he spat
out an oath. "Who told ye?" he demanded, sticking his face into hers,
and she stepped away disdainfully.

"Hungry Bill," she said, and watched him writhe as the bitter truth went
home. "You think you're so smart," she taunted at l