n there at the edge of the wash. He cut the
fuse short when he shot the dam. He wanted the whole thing, both
places, to go up at once. Now it's plain as a Digger Indian's trail
that he didn't intend to go back the way he came, so he must have gone
eastward. And if he went that way, it shows he didn't intend to hit it
back toward Goldpan, but to keep on goin' over the ridge cut-off till
he hit the railroad."

Dick was astonished at the persistent reasoning of the man whom
hitherto he had regarded as a singularly taciturn old worker, wise in
milling and nothing more.

"Now, if there's any of you boys here that know trails," he said,
"come along with me, and we'll section the hillside up there and pick
it up. If you don't, stay here, because I can get it in time, and
don't want no one tramplin' over the ground. I was--a scout for five
years, and--well, I worked in the Geronimo raid."

Dick and Bill looked at him with a new admiration, marveling that the
man had never before betrayed that much of his variegated and hard
career.

"You're right! I believe you're right," the superintendent exclaimed.
"I can help you. So can Dick. We've lived where it came in handy
sometimes."

But two other men joined them, one a white-headed old miner called
Chloride and the other a stoker named Sinclair who had been at the
Cross for but a few weeks, and admitted that he had been a packer in
Arizona.

Slowly the men formed into a long line, and began working toward one
another, examining the ground in a belt twenty feet wide and covering
the upper eastward edge of the canyon. Each had his own method of
trailing. The white-headed man stooped over and passed slowly from
side to side. Bill walked with slow deliberation, stopping every three
or four feet and scanning the ground around him with his brilliant,
keen eyes. The stoker worked like a pointer dog, methodically, and
examining each bush clump for broken twigs.

But it was Rogers the millman, whose method was more like Bill's, who
gave the gathering call. On a patch of earth, close by the side of the
rampart and where the moisture had percolated sufficiently to soften
the ground, was the plain imprint of a man's foot, shod in miner's
brogans, and half-soled. Nor was that all. The half-soling had
evidently been home work, and the supply of pegs had been exhausted.
In lieu of them, three square-headed hobnails had been driven into the
center of the seam holding the patch of leather