What would be more natural
than that two men thrown together in the middle of the hill country,
as her father and Bethune had been thrown together, should have pooled
their interests, especially if each possessed an essential that the
other did not. There had been somehow a sincerity about the man that
carried conviction. She liked his ready admission that her father's
knowledge of mining greatly exceeded his own. And the assertion that
he had advanced sums of money for the carrying on of the work sounded
plausible enough, for the girl knew that her father's income had been
small--pitiably small, but enough, he had always insisted, for his
meager needs. Unquestionably, up to that point the man's words had
carried the ring of truth. Then came the false notes; the open
accusation of Vil Holland, and the warning as to the concealment of
the map and photos which she had twice purposely refused to admit that
she possessed. This was the second time he had gone out of his way to
warn her against Vil Holland. On occasion of their previous meeting,
he had hinted that Holland might pose as a friend of her father--a
pose Bethune, himself, boldly assumed. Perhaps Vil Holland had been a
friend of her father. In the matter of the pack sack, to whom would a
man intrust his belongings, if not to a friend? Surely not to an
enemy, nor to one he had reason to suspect. And now Bethune openly
accused him of cutting the pack sack, and intimated that he would not
hesitate to rob her of her secret.

For a long time she sat with her elbow on the table and her chin
resting in her palm, staring out at the overshadowing hills. "If there
was only somebody," she muttered. "Somebody I could--" Suddenly she
leaped to her feet. "No, I'm glad there isn't! I'll play the game
alone! I came out here to do it, and I'll do it, in spite of forty Vil
Hollands, and Bethunes, and Lord Clendennings! I'll find the mine
myself--and I'll call it a mine, too, if I want to! And then, after I
find it, if Mr. Monk Bethune can show me that he is entitled to a
share in it, I'll give it to him--and not before. I'll stay right here
till I find it, or till my money gives out, and when it does, I'll
earn some more and come back again till that's gone!" Crossing the
room, she stamped determinedly out the door, threw the saddle onto her
cayuse, and rode rapidly down the creek. Horseback riding always
exhilarated her, even back home where she had been obliged to keep to
roads,