fraid
he was in danger of losing out, and he was asking my advice."

"S.P. Hathaway lose out? Not on your life, my young friend! You say he
was askin' for advice? You've done stirred up my curiosity a whole heap,
and I reckon you'll have to tell me who you are before it'll ca'm down
again."

Blount laughed. "Mr. Hathaway thinks I am a special agent for the
Government, travelling on business for the Forest Service."

"The hell he does!" exploded the big man. Then he reached over and laid
a swollen finger on Blount's knee. "Say, boy, before you or him ever
gets off this train--Sufferin' Moses! what was that?"

The break came upon a thunderous crash transmitting itself from car to
car, and the long, heavy train came to a juggling stop. The ranchman
sprang to his feet with an alacrity surprising in so huge a body and
ducked to look out of the open window.

"Twin Buttes!" he gurgled. "And, say, it's a wreck! We've hit something
right slap in the middle of the yard! Let's make a break for the scene
of the confliggration till we see who's killed!"

Blount followed the ranchman's lead, but shortly lost sight of the
burly figure in the crowd of curious passengers pouring from the hastily
opened vestibules. Seen at closer range, the accident appeared to be
disastrous only in a material sense. The heavy "Pacific-type" locomotive
had stumbled over the tongue of a split switch, leaving the rails and
making a blockading barrier of itself across the tracks. Nobody was
hurt; but there would be a delay of some hours before the track could be
cleared.

Finding little to hold him in the spectacle of the derailed locomotive,
Blount strolled on through the railroad yard to the station and the
town. He remembered the place chiefly by its name. In his boyhood it had
been the nearest railroad forwarding-point for the mines at Lewiston,
thirty miles beyond the Lost Hills. Now, as it appeared, it had become a
lumber-shipping station. To the left of the railroad there were numerous
sawmills, each with its mountain of waste dominated by a black chimney,
screen-capped. For the supply of logs an enormous flume led down from
the slopes of the forested range on the south, a trough-like water-chute
out of which, though the working-day was ended, the great logs were
still tumbling in an intermittent stream.

North of the town the valley broke away into a region of bare mesas
dotted with rounded, butte-like hills, with the buttressing ranges on