bay cayuse
began to pick his way carefully down the steep descent to Monte's
Creek.

CHAPTER XVI

PATTY FINDS A GLOVE

Dismounting before her cabin, Patty dropped her reins, pushed open the
door, and entered. Her eyes flew to the little dressing table. The
packet was gone! With a thrill of exultation she carefully inspected
the room. Everything was exactly as she had left it. No blundering
Microby had been here during her absence, for well she knew that
Microby could no more have invaded the cabin without leaving traces of
her visit than she could have flown to the moon. It was midday. She
had intended to rest when she reached the cabin, but her impatience to
establish once for all the identity of the cunning prowler dispelled
her weariness, and after a hurried luncheon, she was once more in the
saddle. "We've both earned a good rest, old fellow," she confided to
her horse, as he threaded the coulee she had marked 1 NW, "but it's
only six or seven miles, and we simply must know who it is that has
been calling on us so persistently. And when I find daddy's mine and
have just oodles of money, I'm going to make it up to you for working
you so hard. You're going to have a nice, big, light, roomy box stall,
and a great big grassy pasture with a creek running through it, and
you're going to have oats three times a day, and you're never going to
have to work any more, and every day I'll saddle you myself and we'll
take a ride just for fun."

Having disposed of her horse's future in this eminently satisfactory
manner, the girl fell to planning her own. She would build a big house
and live in Middleton, and fairly flaunt her gold in the faces of
those who had scoffed at her father--no, she _hated_ Middleton! She
would go there once in a while, to visit Aunt Rebecca, but mainly to
show the narrow, hide-bound natives what they had missed by not
backing her father with a few of their miserable dollars. She would
live in New York--in Washington--in Los Angeles. No, she would live
right here in the hills--the hills, that daddy had loved, and whose
secret he had wrested from their silent embrace. And when she tired of
the hills she would travel. Not the slightest doubt as to her ability
to locate her father's claim assailed her, now that she had learned
to read his map.

It was wonderfully good to be alive. Her glance traveled from the tiny
creek whose shallow waters purled and burbled about her horse's feet,
to the h