and under its clutter of buildings.

"I ... I think...." he began hesitantly. "No; by George, I'm sure of it.
We used to hunt cottontails over that ground, and shoot blackbirds in
the brush. And there, where the bank building is, was a pond." He turned
to Polly. "I built my first raft there, and got my first taste of the
sea."

"Heaven knows how many gallons of it," Frederick laughed, nodding to the
chauffeur. "They rolled you on a barrel, I remember."

"Oh! More!" Polly cried, clapping her hands.

"There's the park," Frederick pointed out a little later, indicating a
mass of virgin redwoods on the first dip of the bigger hills.

"Father shot three grizzlies there one afternoon," was Tom's remark.

"I presented forty acres of it to the city," Frederick went on. "Father
bought the quarter section for a dollar an acre from Leroy."

Tom nodded, and the sparkle and flash in his eyes, like that of his
daughter, were unlike anything that ever appeared in his brother's eyes.

"Yes," he affirmed, "Leroy, the negro squawman. I remember the time he
carried you and me on his back to Alliance, the night the Indians burned
the ranch. Father stayed behind and fought."

"But he couldn't save the grist mill. It was a serious setback to him."

"Just the same he nailed four Indians."

In Polly's eyes now appeared the flash and sparkle.

"An Indian-fighter!" she cried. "Tell me about him."

"Tell her about Travers Ferry," Tom said.

"That's a ferry on the Klamath River on the way to Orleans Bar and
Siskiyou. There was great packing into the diggings in those days, and,
among other things, father had made a location there. There was rich
bench farming land, too. He built a suspension bridge--wove the cables
on the spot with sailors and materials freighted in from the coast. It
cost him twenty thousand dollars. The first day it was open, eight
hundred mules crossed at a dollar a head, to say nothing of the toll for
foot and horse. That night the river rose. The bridge was one hundred
and forty feet above low water mark. Yet the freshet rose higher than
that, and swept the bridge away. He'd have made a fortune there
otherwise."

"That wasn't it at all," Tom blurted out impatiently. "It was at Travers
Ferry that father and old Jacob Vance were caught by a war party of Mad
River Indians. Old Jacob was killed right outside the door of the log
cabin. Father dragged the body inside and stood the Indians off for a
week. Father was