eap of boulders that capped the ridge, and it
happened that I was pretty well concealed from view because I was keeping
in the shade of a huge rock and had crouched down so that I could steady
the telescope across a flat rock in front of me. So I was not discovered
by a man down in the canyon whom I picked up with the telescope while I
was searching the canyon side for a spring.

"The man was suddenly revealed to me as he parted the branches of a large
greasewood and peered out. I think it was the stealthiness of his manner
that impressed me most. He looked up and down and across, but he did not
see me. After a short wait, while he seemed to be listening, he crept out
from behind the bush, turned and lifted forward a bag which hadn't much in
it, yet appeared quite heavy. He went down into the canyon, picking his
way carefully and stepping on rocks, mostly. But in one place where he
must cross a wash of deep sand, he went backward and with a dead branch he
had picked up among the rocks he scratched out each track as he made it.
Babe reminded me of that to-day when she scratched out the snake's track
in the sand up by the mine."

Casey was leaning toward her, listening avidly, his pipe going cold in his
hand. "Was he--?"

"He was an Indian, and very old, and he walked with that bent, tottery
walk of old age. He had one eye and--"

"Injun Jim, that was--couldn't be anybody else!" Casey knocked his pipe
against the front of the little cookstove, emptying the half-burned
tobacco into the hearth. The Little Woman probably wondered why he seemed
so unexcited, but she did not know all of Casey's traits. He put away his
pipe and almost immediately reached for his plug of tobacco, taking a chew
without remembering where he was. "If you feel able to ride," he said,
"I'll ketch up the mule in the morning, and we'll go over there."

"So your heart is really set on finding it, after all. I've been wondering
about that. You haven't seemed to be thinking much about it, lately."

"A feller can prospect," Casey declared, "when he can't do nothin' else."
And he added rather convincingly, "Good jobs is scarce, out this way. I'd
be a fool to pass up this one, when I'd have the hull winter left fer
prospectin'."

"And what about those partners of yours?"

"Oh, them?" Casey hesitated, tempted perhaps to tell the truth. "Oh,
they've quit on me. They quit right away after I went to work. We--we had
a kinda fuss, and they've went back to