Wetherell took another tack. He told her to rest. "By and by I'll come
and rub your back again and fix your eyes. To-morrow you will feel
strong and well." To this she made no reply.

All the day Kelley kept his eyes on the back trail, expecting each
moment to see some dusky trailer break from the cover. As night began to
fall it was Wetherell who brought a brand and built a little fire near
the door to Pogosa's tent so that the flame might cheer her, and she
uttered a sigh of comfort as its yellow glare lighted her dark tepee
walls. He brought her bacon, also, and hot bread and steaming coffee,
not merely because she was useful as a guide, but also because she was
old and helpless and had been lured out of her own home into this gray
and icy world of cloud.

"Eddie," he said, as he returned to his partner, "we're on a wild-goose
chase. The thing is preposterous. There isn't any mine--there can't be
such a mine!"

"Why not? What's struck you now?"

"This country has been traversed for a century. It is 'sheeped' and
cattle-grazed and hunted and forest-ranged--"

Kelley waved his hand out toward the bleak crags which loomed dimly from
amid the slashing shrouds of rain. "Traversed! Man, nobody ever does
anything more than ride from one park to another. The mine is not in a
park. It's on some of these rocky-timbered ridges. A thousand
sheep-herders might ride these trails for a hundred years and never see
a piece of pay quartz. It's a big country! Look at it now! What chance
have we without Pogosa? Now here we are on our way, with a sour old
wench who thinks more of a piece of bread than she does of a hunk of
ore. It's up to you, Andy--you and your 'mash.'"

"Well, I've caught the mind-reading delusion. I begin to believe that I
understand Pogosa's reasoning. She is now beginning to be eaten by
remorse. She came into this expedition for the food and drink. She now
repents and is about to confess that she knows nothing about the mine.
She and Eugene have conspired against us and are 'doing' us--good."

"Nitsky! You're away off your base. The fact is, Pogosa is a Sioux. She
cares nothing for the Shoshoni, and she wants to realize on this mine.
She wants to go back to her people before she dies. She means
business--don't you think she don't; and if her running-gear don't
unmesh to-night or to-morrow she's going to make good--that's my hunch."

"I hope you're right, but I can't believe it."

"You don't need to. Yo