positions. Only after the notice had been pressed on a sharpened stick
and placed before the ruined threshold could he leave it. Turning to
them he said in an awed voice:

"That's the fu'st writin' I ever seed! What does hit mean?"

While Bob repeated it the mountaineer's lips moved after him, as he
tried carefully to fit each sentence to the pencil strokes. But from
his deep breath of uncertainty at the end it appeared to bring him
little satisfaction; and he was turning away when suddenly his frame
stiffened and his hand touched Bob's shoulder.

To the east of them stood Snarly Knob, so called because of its serrated
crest resembling a row of teeth from which the lips had been drawn back
in an angry snarl. Half way up its almost perpendicular side a spur
jutted into the air, and on this a figure stood. Only the hawk-like eyes
of Dale could have seen the clenched fists raised high in a gesture of
fury, eloquent of a flow of oaths which he knew were being hurled upon
the trespassers in the clearing. The Colonel and Bob, following his
steady gaze, saw and understood. Bob's face went white with anger, but
the older man's held a troubled look. Dale's face told no story
whatsoever.

"I wish he'd fall," Bob gritted his teeth. "He's just above the
disappearing stream, Colonel!"

"What's the disappearin' stream?" Dale asked.

"It's a good sized creek that comes tearing down and tumbles into a sort
of cave. Nobody knows where it comes out, and if it ever catches a man
he's gone. The hole and suction is directly under that spur."

"Couldn't fetch 'im with one of them new-fangled guns of your'n, could
ye?"

"Oh, no, Dale; that spur must be easily two miles."

"Come," said the Colonel, "let us go back. Our mission here is done, and
now we must see that it remains well done. Dale, how did you find this
place?"

"I came from the schoolhouse," he answered.

"You mean," Bob cried, "that you trailed him half a dozen miles?"

"Yep," he answered.

"You damned Indian," the young planter admiringly exclaimed; "that's the
smoothest trick I ever saw!"

"'Tain't no trick," Dale simply replied. "I allers find folks that
a-way, same as varmints do. Hit's Nature's way."

"Since we have come together this morning," the Colonel observed,
smiling a frank compliment at Dale's woodcraft, "we may as well drop
the bars, shake hands across the gap, and speak plainly one with the
other. First, I want to thank you, sir, for your chival