CHAPTER VIII

PROSPECTING

The gray of early morning was just beginning to render objects in the little room indistinguishable when Patty awoke. She made a hasty toilet, lighted the fire, and while the water was heating for her coffee, delved into the pack sack and drew out a gray flannel shirt which she viewed critically from every conceivable angle. She tried it on, turning this way and that, before the mirror. "Daddy wasn't so much larger than I am," she smiled, "I can take a tuck in the sleeves, and turn back the collar and it will fit pretty well. Anyway, it will be better than that riding jacket. It will look less citified, and more--more prospecty." A few moments sufficed for the alteration and as the girl stood before the mirror and carefully knotted her brilliant scarf, she nodded emphatic approval.

Breakfast over, she washed her dishes and as she put them on their shelf her glance rested upon the bits of broken rock fragments.

Instantly, her thoughts flew to the night before, and the feeling that someone had been watching her. Rapidly her glance flashed about the cabin searching a place to hide them. "They're too heavy to carry,"

she murmured. "And, yet," her eyes continued their search, lingering for a moment upon some nook or corner only to flit to another, and another, "every place I can think of seems as though it would be the very first place anyone would look." Her eyes fell upon the empty tomato can that she had forgotten to throw into the coulee after last night's supper. She placed the samples in the can. "I might put it with the others in the cupboard, but if anybody looked there they would be sure to see that it had been opened. Where do people hide things? I might go out and dig a hole and bury it, but if anyone were watching--" Suddenly her eyes lighted: "The very thing," she cried: "n.o.body would think of looking among those old bottles and cars." And placing the can in the pan of dish-water, she carried it out and threw it onto the pile of rubbish in the coulee. Returning to the cabin, she put on her father's Stetson, slipped his revolver into its holster, and buckling the belt about her waist, gave one last approving glance into the mirror, closed the door behind her, and saddled her horse.

With the bridle reins in her hand she stood irresolute. In which direction should she start? Obviously, if she must search the whole country, she should begin somewhere and work systematically. She felt in the pocket of her skirt and rea.s.sured herself that the compa.s.s she had taken from the pack sack was there. Her eyes swept the valley and came to rest upon a deep notch in the hills that flanked it upon the west. A coulee sloped upward to the notch, and mounting, the girl crossed the creek and headed for the gap. It was slow and laborious work, picking her way among the loose rocks and fallen trees of the deep ravine that narrowed and grew steeper as she advanced. Loose rocks, disturbed by her horse's feet, clattered noisily behind her, and marks here and there in the soil told her that she was not the first to pa.s.s that way. "I wonder who it was?" she speculated. "Either Monk Bethune, or Vil Holland, or Lord Clendenning, I suppose. They all seem to be forever riding back and forth through the hills." At last she gained the summit, and pulled up to enjoy the view. Judging by the trampled buffalo gra.s.s that capped the divide, the rider who preceded her had also stopped. She glanced backward, and there, showing above the tops of the trees that covered the slope, stood her own cabin, looking tiny and far away, but with its every detail standing out with startling clearness. She could even see the ax standing where she had left it beside the door, and the box she had placed at the end of the log wall to take the place of the cupboard as a home for the pack rats. "Whoever it was could certainly keep track of my movements from here without the least risk of being discovered,"

she thought, "and if he had field gla.s.ses!" She blushed, and turned her eyes to survey the endless succession of peaks and pa.s.ses and valleys that lay spread out over the sea of hills. "How in the world am I ever going to find one tiny little valley among all these?" she wondered. Her heart sank at the vastness of it all, and at her own helplessness, and the utter hopelessness of her stupendous task. "Oh, I can never, never do it," she faltered, "--never." And, instantly ashamed of herself, clenched her small, gloved fist. "I will do it! My daddy found his mine, and he didn't have any pictures to go by either.

He just delved and worked for years and years--and at last he found it. I'd find it if there were twice as many hills and valleys. It may take me years--and I may find it to-day--just think! This very day I may ride into that little valley--or to-morrow, or the next day. It can't be far away. Mrs. Watts said daddy was always to be found within ten miles of the ranch."

She headed her horse down the opposite slope that slanted at a much easier gradient than the one she had just ascended. The trees on this side of the divide were larger and the hillside gradually flattened into a broad, tilted plateau. She gave her horse his head and breathed deeply of the pine-laden air as the animal swung in beside a tiny creek that flowed smooth and black through the dusky silence of the pines whose interlacing branches, high above, admitted the sunlight in irregular splashes of gold. There was little under-brush and the horse followed easily along the creek, where here and there, in the softer soil of damp places, the girl could see the hoof marks of the rider who had crossed the divide. "I wonder whether it was he who watched me last night? There was someone, I could feel it."

The creek sheered sharply around an out-cropping shoulder of rock, and the next instant Patty pulled up short, and sat staring at a little white tent that nestled close against the side of the huge monolith which stood at the edge of a broad, gra.s.sed opening in the woods. The flaps were thrown wide and the walls caught up to allow free pa.s.sage of air. Blankets that had evidently covered a pile of boughs in one corner, were thrown over the ridgepole from which hung a black leather binocular case, and several canvas bags formed an orderly row along one side. A kettle hung suspended over a small fire in front of the tent, and a row of blackened cooking utensils hung from a wooden bar suspended between two crotched stakes. Out in the clearing, a man was bridling a tall buckskin horse. The man was Vil Holland. Curbing a desire to retreat un.o.bserved into the timber, the girl advanced boldly across the creek and pulled up beside the fire. At the sound the man whirled, and Patty noticed that a lean, brown hand dropped swiftly to the b.u.t.t of the revolver.

"Don't shoot!" she called, in a tone that was meant to be sarcastic, "I won't hurt you." Somehow, the sarcasm fell flat.

The man buckled the throat-latch of his bridle and picking up the reins, advanced hat in hand, leading the horse. "I beg your pardon,"

he said, gravely, "I didn't know who it was, when your horse splashed through the creek."

"You have enemies in the hills? Those you would shoot, or who would shoot you?"

He dropped the bridle reins, allowing them to trail on the ground. "If some kinds of folks wasn't a man's enemy he wouldn't be fit to have any friends," he said, simply. "And here in the hills it's just as well to be forehanded with your gun. Won't you climb down? I suppose you've had breakfast?"

Patty swung from the saddle and stood holding the bridle reins. "Yes, I've had breakfast, thank you. Don't let me keep you from yours."

"Had mine, too. If you don't mind I'll wash up these dishes, though.

Just drop your reins--like mine. Your cayuse will stand as long as the reins are hangin'. It's the way they're broke--'tyin' 'em to the ground,' we call it." He glanced at her horse's feet, and pointed to a place beneath the fetlock from which the hair had been rubbed: "Rope burnt," he opined. "You oughtn't to put him out on a picket rope. Use hobbles. There's a couple of pair in your dad's war-bag."

"War-bag?"

"Yeh, it's down in Watts's barn, if he ain't hauled it up for you."

"What are hobbles?"

The man stepped to the tent and returned a moment later with two heavy straps fastened together by a bit of chain and a swivel. "These are hobbles, they work like this." He stooped and fastened the straps about the forelegs of the horse just above the fetlock. "He can get around all right, but he can't get far, and there is no rope to snag him."

Patty nodded. "Thank you," she said. "I'll try it. But how do you know there are hobbles in dad's pack?"

"Where would they be? He had a couple of pair. All his stuff is in there. He always traveled light."

"Did you leave my father's war-bag, as you call it, at Watts's?"

"Yeh, he was in somethin' of a hurry and didn't want to go around by the trail, so he left his outfit here and struck straight through the hills."

"Why was he in a hurry?"

The man placed the dishes in a pan and poured water over them. "I've got my good guess," he answered, thoughtfully.

"Which may mean anything, and tells me nothing."

Holland nodded, as he carefully wiped his tin plate. "Yeh, that's about the size of it."

His att.i.tude angered the girl. "And I have heard he was not the only one in the hills that was in a hurry that day, and I suppose I can have my 'good guess' at that, and I can have my 'good guess' as to who cut daddy's pack sack, too."

"Yeh, an' you can change your guess as often as you want to."

"And every time I change it, I'd get farther from the truth."

"You might, an' you might get nearer." The cowpuncher was looking at her squarely, now. "You ain't left-handed, are you?" he asked, abruptly.

"No, of course not! Why?"

"Because, if you ain't, you better change that belt around so the holster'll carry on yer right side--or else leave it to home."

The coldly impersonal tone angered the girl. "Much better leave it home," she said, "so if anyone wanted to get my map and photographs, he could do it without risk."

"If you had any sense you'd shut up about maps an' photos."

"At least I've got sense enough not to tell whether I carry them with me, or keep them hidden in a safe place."

"You carry 'em on you!" commanded the man, gruffly. "It's a good deal safer'n _cachin_' 'em." He laid his dishes aside, poured the water from the pan, wiped it, hung it in its place, and picking up his saddle blanket, examined it carefully.

"I wonder why my father entrusted his pack sack to you?" said Patty, eyeing him resentfully. "Were you and he such great friends?"

"Knew one another tolerable well," answered Holland, dryly.

"You weren't, by any chance--partners, were you?"

He glanced up quickly. "Didn't I tell you once that yer dad played a lone hand?"

"You knew he made a strike?"

"That's what folks think. But I suppose he told Monk Bethune all about it."

The thinly veiled sneer goaded the girl to anger. "Yes, he did," she answered, hotly, "and he told me, too!"

"Told Monk all about it, did he--location an' all, I suppose?"

"He intended to, yes," answered the girl, defiantly. "The day he made his strike, Mr. Bethune happened to be away up in British Columbia, and daddy told Lord Clendenning that he had made his strike, and he drew a map and sent it to Mr. Bethune by Lord Clendenning."

Holland smoothed the blanket into place upon the back of the buckskin, and reached for his saddle. "An' of course, Monk, he wouldn't file till you come, so you'd be sure an' get a square deal----"

"He never got the map or the photos. Lord Clendenning lost them in a river. And he nearly lost his life, and was rescued by an Indian."