But Captain Skinner was
hardly the man anybody would have picked out for a leader, before
seeing how the rest listened to what he said, and how readily they
seemed to obey him.

He was the shortest, thinnest, ugliest, and most ragged man in the
whole party; and just at this moment he did not appear to be carrying
any arms except the knife and pistol in his belt.

"If I don't smell it, I can see it. Look yonder, Bill."

"That's so! Blood!"

It was the spot on which the buck had fallen, and in a moment more than
half a dozen men were looking around in all directions.

They understood all they saw, too, as well as any Indians in the world,
for in less than five minutes Captain Skinner said,

"That'll do, boys. We must follow that trail. Two white hunters.
They killed the buck. Both wore moccasins. So they ain't fresh from
the settlements. There's something queer about it. They were on foot,
and they carried off their game."

It was, indeed, very queer, and it would not do to let any such puzzle
as that go by unsolved.

So, while several men were ordered out after game, and several more
were left to guard the camp, Captain Skinner himself, with Bill and
five others, armed to the teeth, set out at once on the trail of Murray
and Steve Harrison.

It was easy enough to follow those two pairs of footprints as long as
they were made in the grass. After they got upon rocky ground it was
not so easy, and the miners did not get ahead so fast, but they did not
lose the trail for a moment. Indeed, it was about as straight in one
direction as the nature of the ground would permit.

"Two fellers out yer among these 'ere mountains all by themselves,"
growled Bill, as they drew near the ledge at the head of the deep
canyon.

"We don't know that they're all alone yet," said Captain Skinner.
"They carried that deer somewhere."

"Right down yonder, Captain. They stopped here to rest from kerryin'
of it, and I don't blame 'em, if they'd got to tote it down through
that thar canyon."

"It's a deep one, no mistake."

"Captain, look yer!" suddenly exclaimed one of the men. "We've lit on
it this time."

"The ledge? I wasn't looking at that."

A perfect storm of exclamations followed from every pair of lips in the
party. Such a ledge as that they had never seen before, old
mine-hunters as they were; but each one seemed inclined to ask, just as
Murray had asked of Steve, what could be done with it?

Gold enou