they calls
Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down
into the valley or stay where it was born. Wilfred, if you knowed how
glad I am to see you again, you'd be sort of scared, I reckon, thinking
you'd fell amongst cannibals. Wonder where that aged trapper is?" He
shouted more lustily, and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on
the summit of Turtle Hill.

"Great Scott!" yelled Bill Atkins, glaring down upon the approaching
figure, "if it ain't Wilfred Compton again! Come on, come on, I was
never as glad to see anybody in all my life!"

The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously. "He's very much
altered, then, since I met him last. I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up
there among the rocks."

"Oh, nux, nux," retorted Willock. "He's a-speaking fair. Come along!"

As they ascended the winding road, Wilfred vividly recalled the day
when, from the same elevation, he had watched Lahoma buried in her
day-dreams. A sudden turn brought the cove into view. Lahoma was not
to be seen, but there was the cabin, the dugout and the three cedar
trees in whose shade he had made the discovery that he could not regard
Lahoma as a little girl. It seemed that the cabin door trembled--was
Lahoma's hand upon the latch? And when she opened the door, what
expression would flash upon that face he remembered so well? Would she
be as glad as Willock and Bill Atkins, when she recognized him? Even
one half as glad?

He sighed deeply--it was not to be expected. She had known him only an
hour; since then, many settlers had invaded the country about the
Granite Mountains, a city had sprung up, not far away--other towns were
peeping through the sand, and blooming from canvas to wood and brick.
The air tingled with the electric currents of new life and intense
competition.

"Did Lahoma marry?" he asked abruptly as all three descended to the
lower level of the cove.

"She never did, yet," replied Bill dryly. "Young man, I'm powerful
glad to see you. It's rather chilly out here. I'll take your horse
and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since we
last met. Brick, don't you begin on anything interesting till I come."

"You give me that horse," retorted Brick. "You're too aged a man to be
messing with horses. You'll get a fall one of these days that'll lay
you flat. You'll never knit them bones together, if you do; you ain't
vital enough."

Bill clung grimly to the