llion should get
away--Say, Buck, why couldn't yuh get him for attempted murder?"

"I might, but the witnesses are all on his side, and there'd be a good
chance of his slipping out. Besides, I'm set on finding out first what his
game is. I'm dead certain now it's connected somehow with the north
pasture, and I've an idea it's something big. That car I told you about,
and everything--Well, there's no sense guessing any longer when we can
make a stab at finding out. We'll start the first thing to-morrow."

Bud made no further protest, and at dawn next morning they left camp and
set out northward through the hills. It was a slow journey, and toward the
end of it Buck felt rather seedy. But this was only natural, he told
himself, after lying around and doing nothing; and he even wished he had
made the move sooner.

Both he and Jessup were conscious of a growing excitement as they neared
the goal from which circumstances had held them back so long. Were they
going to find out something definite at last? Or would fate thrust another
unexpected obstacle in their way? Above all, if fortune proved kind, what
would be the character of their discovery?

Immensely intrigued and curious, Bud chattered constantly throughout the
ride, suggesting all sorts of solutions of the problem, some of which were
rather far-fetched. Gold was his favorite--as it has been the favorite
lure for adventurers all down the ages--and he drew an entrancing picture
of desert sands sprinkled with the yellow dust. He thought of other
precious metals, too, and even gave a passing consideration to a deposit
of diamonds or some other precious or semi-precious stones. Once he
switched off oddly on the subject of prehistoric remains, and Stratton's
surprised inquiry revealed the fact that three years ago he had worked for
a party of scientific excavators in Montana.

"Them bones and skeletons as big as houses bring a pile of money, believe
me!" he assured his companion. "The country up there ain't a mite
different from this, neither."

Buck himself was unusually silent and abstracted. During the last ten days
of enforced idleness he had considered the subject for hours at a time and
from every conceivable angle, with the result that a certain possibility
occurred to him and persisted in lingering in his mind, in spite of its
seeming improbability. It was so vague and unlikely that he said nothing
about it to Bud; but now, mounting the steep trail, the thoug