ning and
shook their heads. They had seen other men ride out alone into the
hills and they had afterward found some of those travelers--what the
Apaches had left of them. It was no affair of theirs--but they fell
into the habit of watching the tawny slopes every afternoon when the
shadows began to lengthen and speculating among themselves whether the
bearded rider was going to return this time. Which was as close to
solicitude as they could come.

One of their number--he had lost two or three small bets by
Schiefflin's appearing safe and sound on various evenings--took it
upon himself to give their visitor a bit of advice.

"What for," he asked, "do yo'-all go a-takin' them pasears that-a-way?"

Schiefflin smiled good-naturedly at the questioner.

"Just looking for stones," he said.

"Well," the other told him, "all I got to say is this. Yo'-all keep on
and yo'll sure find yo'r tombstone out there some day."

He never dreamed that he had named a town.

Nor did Schiefflin think much of it at the moment: he had received
other warnings, just as strong, before. But none of them had been put
as neatly as this. So the words abode in his memory although they did
not affect his comings and goings in the least.

Only a few days later he left the Bruncknow house for a longer trip
than usual. He rode his mule down the San Pedro toward the mouth of
the dry wash in which the two prospectors had found that silver ore
the day before they died.

And the luck that guides a man's steps toward good or ill, as the whim
seizes it, saw to it that he came into the old camp where the Apaches
had enjoyed their morning murder months before.

Some one had buried both bodies but whoever had done this--possibly it
was one of the self-styled miners at the Bruncknow house--had not
enough interest in minerals to disturb the little heap of specimens.
It lay there near the graves, just as the Apaches had left it, just as
its original owners had piled it up before they sought their blankets;
to dream perhaps of their big strike while death waited for the coming
of the dawn, to cheat them out of their discovery.

The story was as plain as printed words on a page: the nameless
graves among the tall clumps of bear-grass proclaimed the penalty for
venturing into this neighborhood. The little handful of dark-colored
stones betrayed the secret of the riches in the hills. The dry wash
came down between the ridges half a mile ahead to show the way t