n some way slip from his sight. And yet, vigilant as
he was, the door of Swaney's saloon got somehow between and left him on
one side barking and whining and running like mad about the room, while
on the other his master stood jingling the two pieces of silver in his
pocket--the price Mike Swaney had paid for his new dog.

Halfway up the mountain-side Rathburn was still chuckling, still
jingling his coins.

"When a man pays money," he was saying aloud, as he squared his
shoulders and looked across the valley at the setting sun, "when a man
pays money he watches out. I reckon Stub has gone fer good, sure
thing, this time!" And yet--long before dawn there came a whine and a
gentle scratch at his cabin door; and although four times the dog was
returned to his new owner, four times he escaped and nosed the long
trail that led to the cabin on the mountain-side.

After Stub's fourth desertion the saloon-keeper refused to take him
again, and for a week the dog lay unmolested in his old place in the
sun outside the cabin door, or dozed before the fireplace at night.
Then Rathburn bestirred himself and made one last effort, taking the
dog quite over the mountain and leaving him tied to a tree.

At the end of thirty-six hours, Rathburn was congratulating himself; at
the end of thirty-seven he was crying, "Down, sir--down!" to a
joy-crazed little dog which had come leaping down the mountain-side
with eighteen inches of rope dangling at his heels--a rope whose frayed
and tattered end showed the marks of sharp little teeth.

Rathburn gave it up after that, and Stub stayed on. There was no
petting, no trick-teaching; there were only sharp words and sometimes a
kick or a cuff. Gradually the whines and barks gave way to the more
silent appeal of wistful eyes, and Stub learned that life now was a
thing of little food and less joy, and that existence was a thing of
long motionless watchings of a master who would not understand.

Weeks passed and a cold wind swept down from the mountains. The line
of snow crept nearer and nearer the clearing about the cabin, and the
sun grew less warm. Rathburn came home each night with a deeper frown
on his face, and a fiercer oath as he caught sight of the dog. Down at
Swaney's the men knew that Bill Rathburn was having a "streak o' poor
luck"; the golden treasure he sought was proving elusive. Stub knew
only that he must hide each night now when his master appeared.

As the days passed