lbow of the Sangre de Cristo range. It is a massive but
symmetrical mountain, with three peaks so nearly of the same altitude
that the central dome seems the lowest of them all, though it is
actually fourteen thousand four hundred and eighty feet above the sea.
On the west and south this great mass rises from the flat, dry floor of
the San Luis Valley in sweeping, curving lines, and the pinyons cover
these lower slopes like a robe of bronze green.

At eight thousand feet above the sea these suave lines become broken.
The pinyons give place to pine and fir, and the somber canyons begin to
yawn. It was just here, where the grassy hills began to break into
savage walls, that Bidwell made his camp beside a small stream which
fell away into Bear Creek to the south. From this camp he could look far
out on the violet and gold of the valley, and see the railway trains
pass like swift and monstrous dragons. He could dimly see the lights of
Las Animas also, and this led him to conceal his own camp-fire.

Each day he rode forth, skirting the cliffs, examining every bit of rock
which showed the slightest mineral stain. Scarcely a moment of the
daylight was wasted in this search. His mysterious guide no longer
touched him, and this he took to be a favorable omen. "I'm near it," he
said.

One day he hitched his mule to a small dead pine at the foot of a steep
cliff, and was climbing to the summit when a stone, dislodged by his
feet, fell, bounced, thumped the mule in the ribs, and so scared the
animal that he pulled up the tree and ran away.

Angry and dispirited (for he was hungry and tired) Bidwell clambered
down and began to trail the mule toward camp. The tree soon clogged the
runaway and brought him to a stand in a thicket of willows.

As Bidwell knelt to untie the rope his keen eyes detected the glitter of
gold in the dirt which still clung to the moist root of the pine. With a
sudden conviction of having unearthed his fortune, the miner sprang to
his saddle and hurried back to the spot whence the tree had been rived.
It was dusk by the time he reached the spot, but he could detect gold in
the friable rock which lined the cavity left by the uprooted sapling.
With a mind too excited to sleep he determined to stay with his find
till morning. To leave it involved no real risk of losing it, and yet he
could not bring himself to even build a camp-fire, for fear some one
might be drawn from the darkness to dispute his claim.

I