find it deserted, although it
seemed incredible that anyone could have negotiated the divide
unnoticed in that brief space of time. "I saw him plain as day," she
murmured, as she turned her horse toward the opposite side of the
valley. "I couldn't tell for sure that it was he--I didn't even see
the color of the horse--but who else could it be? He knew I started
out this way, and he knew that I carried the map and photos, and was
hunting daddy's claim. I know, now who was watching the other night."
She shuddered. "And I've got to stay here 'til I find that claim,
knowing all the time that I am being watched! There's no place I can
go that he will not follow. Even in my own cabin, I'll always feel
that eyes are watching me. And when I do find the mine, he'll know it
as soon as I do, and it will be a race to file." Drawing up sharply,
she gritted her teeth, "And he knows the short cuts through the hills,
and I don't. But I will know them!" she cried, "and when I do find the
mine, Mr. Vil Holland is going to have the race of his life!"

Another parallel valley, and another, she explored before turning her
horse's head toward the high divide that she had reasoned separated
her from Monte's Creek at a point well above her cabin. Comparatively
low ridges divided these valleys, and as she topped each ridge, the
girl swerved sharply into the timber and, concealing herself, intently
watched the back trail--a maneuver that caused the solitary horseman
who watched from a safe distance, to chuckle audibly as he carefully
wiped the lenses of his binoculars.

The sunlight played only upon the higher peaks when at last, weary and
dispirited, she negotiated the steep descent to Monte's Creek at a
point a mile above the sheep camp. "If he'd only photographed
something besides a rock wall," she muttered, petulantly, "I'd stand
some show of finding it." At the door of the cabin she slipped from
her saddle, and pausing with her hand on the coiled rope, dropped her
eyes to the rubbed place below her horse's fetlock. A moment later she
knelt and fastened a pair of hobbles about the horse's ankles, and,
removing the saddle, watched the animal roll clumsily in the grass,
and shuffle awkwardly to the creek where he sucked greedily at the
cold water. Entering the cabin, she lighted the lamp and stared about
her. Her glance traveled one by one over the objects of the little
room. Everything was apparently as she had left it--yet--an
uncomfortabl