'a,' and 'b?'" Suddenly,
her glance became fixed upon a point up the valley that lay just
within her range of vision. With puckered eyes and hat-brim drawn low
upon her forehead, she stared steadily into the distance. She knew
that she had never before seen this valley, and yet the place seemed,
somehow, strangely familiar. With a low cry she bent over one of the
photographs. Her hands trembled violently as her eyes once more flew
to the valley. Yes, there it was, spread out before her just the way
it was in the photograph--the rock-strewn ground--she could even
identify the various rocks with the rocks in the picture. There was
the lone tree, and the long rock wall, higher at its upper end,
and--yes, she could just discern it--the zigzag crack in the rock
ledge! Jamming the papers into her pocket she leaped into the saddle
and dashed toward a fringe of scrub that marked the course of a coulee
which led downward into the valley. Over its edge, and down its
brush-choked course, slipping, sliding, scrambling, she urged her
horse, reckless of safety, reckless of anything except that her weary,
and at times it had seemed her hopeless, search was about to end. She
had stood where her daddy had stood when he took that photograph--had
seen with her own eyes--the jagged crack in the rock wall!

In the valley the going was better, and with quirt and spur she urged
her horse to his best, her eyes on the lone pine tree. At the rock
wall beyond, she pulled up sharply and stared at the jagged crevice
that bisected it from top to bottom. It was the crevice of the
photograph! Very deliberately she began at the top and traced its
course to the bottom. She noted the scraggly, stunted pines that
fringed the rim of the wall and that the crack started straight, and
then zigzagged to the ground. Producing the "close up" photograph, she
compared it with the reality before her--an entirely superfluous and
needless act, for each minute detail of the spot at which she stared
was indelibly engraved upon her memory. For hours on end, she had
studied those photographs, and now--she laughed aloud, and the sound
roused her to action. Slipping from the horse, she fumbled at the pack
strings of the saddle and loosened the canvas bag. She reached into
it, and stood erect holding a light hand-axe. Once more she consulted
her map. "Stake l. c.," she read. "That's lode claim--and then that
funny wiggly mark, and then the word center." Her brows drew toget