hey call ye to home?"

"Bud."

"Bud, eh? Short for brother. Folks got a fam'ly." He reflected that
Bud's sister, if he had one, might be nice-looking. "Well, Bud, I'm
under obligations to ye, for hitchin' up the plug in the shade. 'Twas
thoughtful. Where ha' ye been?"

"I've been hunting Dad. But he's off in the hills. If I could get ye
to our camp----"

"The plug'll have to do it. Unhitch him."

Bud untied the animal, who limped even more acutely than his master.
Perhaps he lacked his master's grit. Jeff was the colour of parchment
when he found himself in the saddle, whereon he sat huddled up,
gripping the horn.

"Freeze on," said the boy.

"You bet," Jeff replied laconically.

Bud led the horse a few yards down the road, passing from it into the
chaparral. Thence, through a tangled wilderness of scrub-oak and
manzanita, down a steep slope, into a pretty canon.

"Here we are."

A sudden turn of the trail revealed a squatter's hut built of rough
lumber, and standing beneath a live-oak. A small creek was babbling
its way to the Salinas River. The clearing in front of the hut was
strewn with empty tins. A tumble-down shed encircled by a corral was
on the other side of the creek. Jeff knew at once that he was looking
at one of the innumerable mountain-claims taken up by Eastern settlers
in the days of the great land boom, and forsaken by them a couple of
years afterwards.

Jeff slid from the saddle on to his sound leg; then, counting rapidly
the shining tins, he said reflectively:--

"Bin here about a month, I reckon."

"Yes--Mister--Sherlock--Holmes."

Jeff stared. The ragamuffins of the foothills are not in the habit of
reading fiction, although lying comes easy to them.

"Kin you read?" said Jeff.

"I--_kin_," replied Bud, grinning (he had nice teeth). "Kin you?"

"I can cuff a cheeky kid," said Jeff, scowling.

"But you've got to catch him first."

The boy laughed gaily, and ran into the house, as Jeff sat down
propping his broad back against a tree.

"Things here are not what they seem," Jeff murmured to his horse, who
twitched an intelligent ear, as if he, too, was well aware that this
was no home of squatter or miner. And who else of honest men would
choose to live in such a desolate spot?

Presently the boy came back, carrying a feed of crushed barley. Then
he unsaddled the horse, watered him, and fed him. Jeff grunted
approval.

"You're earnin' that dollar--every cent of it." A deli