"There's his fireplace," said the girl, wheeling her horse through a clump of wild rosebushes. "Yes, and he's right about the tent, too. It is a bed. Here's a dozen cigarette boxes and--What's this, Mr. Ashton!

Looks as if someone had left a note for you."

"A note?" he muttered, slipping to the ground.

He ran over to the spot to which she was pointing. On a little pile of stones, in front of where his tent had been pitched, a piece of coa.r.s.e wrapping paper covered with writing was fluttering in the light breeze. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and read the note with fast-growing bewilderment.

"What is it?" sympathetically questioned the girl, quick to see that he was in real trouble.

He did not answer. He did not even realize that she had spoken. With feverish haste he caught up an opened envelope that had lain under the paper. Drawn by his odd manner, Knowles and Gowan came over to stare at him. He had torn a letter from the envelope. It was in typewriting and covered less than a page, yet he gaped at it, reading and re-reading the lines as if too dazed to be able to comprehend their meaning.

Slowly the involved sentences burned their way into his consciousness.

As his bewilderment cleared, his concern deepened to dismay, and from dismay to consternation. His jaw dropped slack, his face whitened, the pupils of his eyes dilated.

"What is it? What's the matter?" exclaimed the girl.

"Matter?"--His voice was hoa.r.s.e and strained. He crumpled the letter in a convulsive grasp--"Matter? I'm ruined!--ruined! G.o.d!"

Knowles and the girl were both silent before the despair in the young man's face. Gowan was more obtuse or else less considerate.

"Sh.o.r.e, you're plumb busted, partner," he ironically condoled. "Your whole outfit has flown away on the wings of the morning. Hope you won't tell us the pay for your veal has vamoosed with the rest."

"Oh, Kid, for shame!" reproved the girl. "Of course Daddy won't ask for any pay--now."

Ashton burst into a jangling high-pitched laugh.

"No, no! there's still my pony and saddle and rifle and watch!" he cried, half hysterically. "Take them! strip me! Here's my hat, too! I paid forty-five dollars for it--silver band." He flung it on the ground. "There's a hole in it--I wish the hole were through my head!"

"Now, now, look here, son. Keep a stiff upper lip," said Knowles.

"Don't act like you're locoed. It's all right about that veal, as Chuckie says, and you oughtn't to make such a fuss over the loss of a camp outfit."

"Camp outfit?" shrilled Ashton. "If that were all! if that were all!

What shall I do? Lost--all lost!--father--all! Ruined! Oh, my G.o.d!

What shall I do? Oh, my G.o.d! Oh--" Anguish and despair choked the cry in his throat. He collapsed in a huddled, quivering heap.

"_Sho!_ It can't be as bad as that, can it?" condoled the cowman.

"Go away!" sobbed the prostrated man. "Go away! Take my pony--all!

Only leave me!"

"If ever I saw a fellow plumb locoed!" muttered Gowan, half awe-struck.

"Maybe he'll come to his senses if we leave him," suggested Knowles.

He took a step towards Ashton. "All right, son, we'll go. But we'll leave you half that veal, and we won't take your hawss. D'you want help in looking for your outfit?"

Ashton shook his downbent head.

"Well, if you want to let the thieves get away with it, that's your own lookout. You'd better strike back to the railroad."

"Go away! Leave me!" moaned Ashton.

"Gone to smash--clean busted!" commented Gowan, as he turned about to go to his horse, his spurs jingling gayly.

Knowles followed him, shaking his head. The girl had been gazing at Ashton with an expression that varied from sympathetic commiseration to contemptuous pity. As her adopted father and Gowan mounted, she rode over to them.

"Go on," she said. "I'll overtake you as soon as I've watered my hawss."

"You're not going to speak to that kettle of mush again, Miss Chuckie," remonstrated Gowan.

"Yes, I am, Kid, and you know you wouldn't stop me if you could. He needs it. I'm glad you smashed his pistol. A rifle is not so handy."

Knowles stared over the bushes at the huddled figure on the ground.

"Look here, Chuckie, you can't mean that?"

"Yes," she insisted. "He is ready to do it right now, unless someone throws him a rope and hauls him out of the slough."

"Lot of fuss over a tenderfoot you never saw before today," grumbled Gowan.

"That's not like you, Kid," she reproached. "Besides, you don't want the trouble of digging a grave. It would have to be deep, to keep out the coyotes. Daddy, you're forgetting the veal."

"So I am," agreed the cowman. "Ride on, Kid. You'll be carrying most weight."

The puncher reluctantly wheeled his horse and started down the bank of the dry stream. Knowles unfastened the hind quarters of veal from behind the cantle of his saddle, lifted them into a fork of one of the low trees, and rode off after Gowan, folding up his blood-stained slicker.

The girl at once slipped from her pony and walked quietly around to the drooping, despairing man.

"Mr. Ashton," she softly began, "they have gone. I have stayed to find out if there is anything I can do."

She paused for him to reply. His shoulders quivered, but he remained silent. She went on soothingly: "You are all unstrung. The shock was too sudden. It must have been a terrible one! Won't you tell me about it? Perhaps that will make you feel better."

"As if anything could when I am ruined, utterly ruined!" he moaned.

"But how? Please tell me," she urged.

Slowly he raised his haggard face and looked up at her. There could be no question but that she was full of sincere sympathy and concern for him. Her eyes shone upon him with all the motherly tenderness that any good woman, however young, has in her heart for those who suffer.

"It's all in this--this letter," he muttered brokenly. "Expected my remittance in it--Got ruin! ruin!"

"It had been opened," suggested the girl. "Perhaps those who took your outfit also took your remittance money."

"No, there wasn't any--not a cent! My valet had my written instructions to open it and cash the money orders--that weren't there! He and the guide--they came back. The letter had told them all, all! I was not here. They took the outfit--the money--divided it. Left that note--they had no more use for me.... Ruined! utterly ruined!"

"But if you wish us to run them down?"

"No--good riddance! What they took is less than what I owed them.

Ungrateful scoundrels!"

"That's it!" approved the girl. "Get up your s.p.u.n.k. Cuss, if you like.

Rip loose, good and hard. It will ease you off."