nearest ruin.

It must have been a pretty large building before its walls began to
topple over with age and decay. Some parts that were yet standing were
three stories high, and all was built of rudely shaped and roughly
fitted stone. There was no mortar to be seen anywhere. If there had
ever been any it was all washed away.

"There must have been quite a town here once," said Murray, "up and
down both banks of the run of water. It was a good place for one. It
looks as if there was plenty of good land beyond, and there's a great
bend in the line of the mountains."

"I wish I knew where it led to. I'd follow it."

"What for?"

"It might give me a chance to get away."

"It might. And then again it might not. There's a gap that seems to
open off there to the west, but then it won't do."

"Why won't it do? Couldn't I try it?"

"Try it? Yes, but you won't. I must look out for you, Steve. You're
more of a boy than I thought for."

"I'm man enough, Murray. I dare try anything."

"That's boy, Steve. Stop a minute. Have you any horse to carry you
across country?"

Steve looked down at the nearest pile of ruined masonry with a
saddening face.

"You have no horse, no blanket, no provisions, no supply of ammunition
except what you brought along for to-day's hunt. Why, Steve, I'm
ashamed of you. There isn't a young Lipan brave in the whole band that
would set off in such a fashion as that--sure to make a failure. You
ought to have learned something from the Indians, it seems to me."

Steve blushed scarlet as he listened, for he had been ready the moment
before to have shouldered his rifle and set off at once toward that
vague and unknown western "gap." It must be that the glimpse he had
taken of that golden ledge had stirred up all the "boy" in him.

"I guess I wouldn't have gone far," he said, "before I'd have run clean
out of cartridges. I've less than two dozen with me."

"When you do start, my boy, I'll see to it that you get a good ready.
Now let's try for one of those deer. It's a long shot. See if you can
make it."

A fine buck with branching antlers, followed by two does, had been
feeding in the open space beyond the ruins. The wind was brisk just
then from that direction, and they had not scented the two hunters.
They had slowly drawn nearer and nearer until they were now about three
hundred yards away. That is a greater distance than is at all safe
shooting for any but the best