; he
never dreamed that either Jack or Carlos could be inside, but he had to
obey the impulse that first prompted him.

The great hole in the hillside was blacker than ever, and Jim felt a
shudder of repulsion as he gazed into it. He had always hated his old
subterranean existence of digging into the earth for her treasures, when
everywhere on her broad plains the fruit and flowers and grasses offered
an equal opportunity and a fuller and higher meaning to life.

"Jack! Jack!" Jim called weakly, down on his knees at the gaping mouth
of the tunnel, trying to grow more accustomed to the darkness and crying
Jack's name, not because he thought her near, but because he was filled
with a vague foreboding.

There was no answer out of the grim darkness. Jack could give no sign of
her presence, and the black shadow into which she had fallen hid the
outline of her prostrate body.

Suddenly a boom of distant thunder sounded from the far side of the
world, and Jim Colter sprang quickly to his feet, for he knew how
swiftly storms travel across the western plains, and he feared Jack and
Carlos might wait for him in the dangerous shelter of the trees. Faster
than he had run in many a long day he left the neighborhood of the
unlucky mine.

A little later Carlos appeared at the opening of the pine woods, his
brown face scratched, his breath coming unevenly, with his gun on his
square, lean shoulder, and a little bunch of a feathery or furry
something tucked under his arm. He did not linger as Jim had; he
believed at once that his companions had given him up, and sped on as
fast as his weary brown legs could carry him along the path which had
brought them to the place of the pine cone hills. Carlos had wandered
too far into the woods and had lost his way, but now he hoped to
overtake the other adventurers and in some way to make his peace.

When Jack opened her eyes it was nearly dark outside the mine as well as
in. She lay quite still, feeling a dull pain in her head and an aching
numbness in her body. "Olive! Jean! Ruth!" she called fretfully. "I'm
ill. Why don't somebody come to me?" She thought she had wakened in the
middle of the night in her bed at Rainbow Lodge. Poor Jack put out her
hand to touch Jean, who usually slept with her, and her fingers closed
on some loose mud and gravel. She held it for a moment and struggled to
sit up, but her head ached harder than ever, and she reached back to
find her lost pillow. There was