ame slowly down into a land which seemed to
Tavernake like the biblical land of Canaan. Three times in ten days they
had to halt and make a camp, while Tavernake prepared a geographical
survey of likely-looking land.

McCleod came up to Tavernake one day with a dull-looking lump in his
hand, glistening in places.

"Copper," he announced, shortly. "It's what I've been looking for all
the time. No end to it. There's something bigger than oil here."

They spent a month in the locality, and every day McCleod became more
enthusiastic. After that it was hard work to keep him from heading
homeward at once.

"I tell you, sir," he explained to Tavernake, "there's millions there,
millions between those four stakes of yours. What's the good of more
prospecting? There's enough there in a square acre to pay the expenses
of our expedition a thousand times over. Let's get back and make
reports. We can strike the railway in ten days from here--perhaps
sooner."

"You go," Tavernake said. "Leave me Pete and two of the horses."

The man stared at him in surprise.

"What's the good of going on alone?" he asked. "You're not a mining
expert or an oil man. You can't go prospecting by yourself."

"I can't help it," Tavernake answered. "It's something in my blood, I
suppose. I am going on. Think! You'll strike that railway and in a month
you will be back in New York. Don't you imagine, when you're there, when
you hear the clatter and turmoil of it, when you see the pale crowds
chivvying one another about to pick the dollars from each other's
pockets,--don't you believe you'll long for these solitudes, the big
empty places, great possibilities, the silence? Think of it, man. What
is there beyond those mountains, I wonder?"

McCleod sighed.

"You're right," he said. "One may never get so far out again. Our
fortunes will keep, I suppose, and anyhow we ought to strike a telegraph
station in about a fortnight. We'll go right ahead, then."

In ten days they dropped ten thousand feet. They came to a land where
their throats were always dry, where the trees and shrubs seemed like
property affairs from a theatre, where they plunged their heads into
every pool that came to wash their noses and mouths from the red dust
that seemed to choke them up. They found tin and oil and more copper.
Then, by slow stages, they passed on to a land of great grassy plains,
of blue grass, miles and miles of it, and suddenly one day they came to
the telegraph