e not Indians, nor were they dressed as such. They were
dressed in every way that could be thought of, except well and cleanly.

If the odds and ends of several clothing-stores had been picked up
after a fire, and then about worn out, and patched and mended with bits
of blankets and greasy buckskin, something like those twenty odd suits
of clothes might have been produced; that is, if the man who tried to
do it could have had these for a pattern. If not, he would have failed.

The men themselves were as much out of the common way as were the
clothes they wore, but they had somehow managed to keep their horses
and mules in pretty good condition.

Horses and mules are of more importance than clothing to men who are
far away from tailors and civilization as were these new-comers in the
neighborhood of Steve's mine.

If Steve had seen them he would probably have trembled for the
"Buckhorn," for Murray would at once have told him that these men were
miners.

That was nothing against them, certainly, and they must have been
daring fellows to push their hunt for gold so far beyond any region
known to such hunters.

One look at their hard, reckless faces would have convinced anybody
about their "daring." They looked as if they were ready for anything.

So they were, indeed; and it is quite probable a man of Murray's
experience would have guessed at once that they were ready for a good
many other things besides mining.

Just now, certainly, they were thinking something else.

"Bill," said the foremost rider to a man a little behind him, "we were
wrong to leave the trail of them army fellers. We're stuck and lost in
here among the mountains."

"It looks like It. We'll hev to go into camp and scout around till we
find a pass. But it wasn't any use follerin' the cavalry arter we
found they was bound west."

"That's so. It won't do for us to come out on the Pacific slope. It's
Mexico or Texas for us."

"We'd better say Santa Fe."

"They'd make us give too close an account of ourselves there. Some of
the boys might let out somethin'."

"Guess it's Mexico, then. That isn't far away now. But I wish I knew
the way down out of this."

The ruins, strange and wonderful as they were, did not seem to excite
any great degree of curiosity among those men.

They talked about them, to be sure, but in a way which showed that they
had all seen the same sort of thing before during their wild rovings
among the mountai