y, without showing the slightest trace of
surprise. "Oh, that's where I dropped it, eh? I figured Monk thought
he'd found somethin', the way he come out of your cabin the last time
he searched it, so I followed him to the place you'd salted for him."
He paused, and for the first time since she had known him, Patty
thought she detected a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "He didn't
waste much time there--just clawed around a few minutes where you'd
pecked up the dirt, an' then sunk his stakes, an' wrote out his
notice, an' high-tailed for the register's office. That was a pretty
smart trick of yours but it wouldn't have fooled anyone that knows
rock. Bethune's no prospector. He's a Canada crook--whisky runner, an'
cattle rustler, an' gambler. Somehow, he'd got a suspicion that your
father made a strike he'd never filed, an' he's been tryin' to get
holt of it ever since. I looked your plant over after he'd hit for
town to file, an' when I tumbled to the game, I let him go ahead."

"But, suppose the rock had been right? Suppose, it had really been
daddy's claim?"

"Buck can run rings around that cayuse of his any old day. I expect,
if the rock had be'n right, Monk Bethune would of met up with an
adventure of some sort a long ways before he hit town."

"You knew he was searching my cabin all the time?"

"Yes, I knew that. But, I saw you was a match for 'em--him an' the
fake Lord, too."

"Is that the reason you threw Lord Clendenning into the creek, that
day?"

"Yes, that was the reason. I come along an' caught him at it. Comical,
wasn't it? I 'most laughed. I saw you slip back into the brush, but
I'd got so far along with it I couldn't help finishin'. You thought
the wrong man got throw'd in."

"You knew I thought that of you--and you didn't hate me?"

"Yes, I knew what you thought. You thought it was me that was
searchin' your cabin, too. An' of course I didn't hate you because you
couldn't hardly help figurin' that way after you'd run onto the place
in the rim-rocks where I watched from. If it wasn't for the trees I
could have strung along in a different place each time, but that's the
only spot that your cabin shows up from."

"And you knew that they always followed me through the hills?"

"Yes, an' they wasn't the only ones that followed. Clendenning ain't
as bad as Bethune, for all he's throw'd in with him. The days Bethune
followed you, I followed Bethune. An' when Clendenning followed you, I
prospected,