yer right side--or else leave it to home."

The coldly impersonal tone angered the girl. "Much better leave it
home," she said, "so if anyone wanted to get my map and photographs,
he could do it without risk."

"If you had any sense you'd shut up about maps an' photos."

"At least I've got sense enough not to tell whether I carry them with
me, or keep them hidden in a safe place."

"You carry 'em on you!" commanded the man, gruffly. "It's a good deal
safer'n _cachin_' 'em." He laid his dishes aside, poured the water
from the pan, wiped it, hung it in its place, and picking up his
saddle blanket, examined it carefully.

"I wonder why my father entrusted his pack sack to you?" said Patty,
eyeing him resentfully. "Were you and he such great friends?"

"Knew one another tolerable well," answered Holland, dryly.

"You weren't, by any chance--partners, were you?"

He glanced up quickly. "Didn't I tell you once that yer dad played a
lone hand?"

"You knew he made a strike?"

"That's what folks think. But I suppose he told Monk Bethune all about
it."

The thinly veiled sneer goaded the girl to anger. "Yes, he did," she
answered, hotly, "and he told me, too!"

"Told Monk all about it, did he--location an' all, I suppose?"

"He intended to, yes," answered the girl, defiantly. "The day he made
his strike, Mr. Bethune happened to be away up in British Columbia,
and daddy told Lord Clendenning that he had made his strike, and he
drew a map and sent it to Mr. Bethune by Lord Clendenning."

Holland smoothed the blanket into place upon the back of the buckskin,
and reached for his saddle. "An' of course, Monk, he wouldn't file
till you come, so you'd be sure an' get a square deal----"

"He never got the map or the photos. Lord Clendenning lost them in a
river. And he nearly lost his life, and was rescued by an Indian."

There was a sound very like a cough, and Patty glanced sharply at the
cowpuncher, but his back was toward her, and he was busy with his
cinch. "Tough luck," he remarked, as he adjusted the latigo strap.
"An', you say, yer dad told you all about this partnership business?"

"No, he didn't."

"Who did?"

"Mr. Bethune."

"Oh."

Something in the tone made the girl feel extremely foolish. Holland
was deliberately strapping the brown leather jug to his saddle horn,
and gathering up her reins, she mounted. "At least, Mr. Bethune is a
gentleman," she emphasized the word nastily.

"An' they can't han