himself. "Oh, don't you worry about
John, Jim Colter I mean," he returned coolly. "I am not afraid of him,
though I won't trouble you any more than I can help."

"Did you ask the man if he found any signs of gold in our creek, Jack?"
Jean demanded eagerly, as the three girls rode off together again.

Jack shook her head. "No, silly, of course I didn't," she replied.
"There are lots of people out west who are crazy about finding gold.
Don't you suppose if there had been any gold on our ranch father would
have made the discovery years ago?"

"I don't know," Jean returned quietly. "But you might have asked just
the same."

Jim had set his animal trap in some thick underbrush and covered it with
twigs and evergreens, but Jack remembered the exact spot, and the girls
now rode directly toward it. Jack carried her rifle with her, for if
they found an animal that had been caught and not killed she intended to
put it out of its misery.

Within a short distance of the trap, but before the girls could see it,
they heard a queer moaning that made them turn pale. The cry was not
like a child's and not like an animal's; it was a queer combination of
both.

Jean stopped her pony instantly. "I sha'n't go on any farther with you,
Jack," she declared resolutely. "Jim has caught something in that
wretched trap of his and it is suffering horribly. It won't do any good
for me to see it. Olive, please you go on with Jack; I simply can't, I
am such a wretched coward."

Olive and Jack both looked rather miserable at the prospect ahead of
them, but Jack would not turn back and Olive would not desert her. By
this time the strange sobbing had ceased and there was no further sound
of movement or struggle in the neighborhood of the snare until the two
girls rode up in plain sight of it.

"Good gracious, Olive, what is that?" Jack called quickly, almost
falling from her horse in her amazement.

Instead of discovering a wild animal staring at them with ferocious,
frightened eyes, the riders spied a small, brown figure crouched on the
ground in front of the wicked steel cage, as mute and motionless as a
hare when first startled by a hunter. The boy's back was turned to Olive
and Jack and he would not condescend even to look around at his captors.

Jack guessed at once what had happened. The child must have been
starving, for he had thrust his arm inside the opening of the trap for
the bait that had been put inside, and the spring had clos