e to bare, rock-capped hills, the stream broke at intervals
into noisy rapids, with deep pools to mark the steps of its descent.

Ballard's seat on the fireman's box was on the wrong side for the
topographical purpose, and he crossed the cab to stand at Hoskins's
elbow. As they were passing one of the stillest of the pools, the
engineman said, with a sidewise jerk of his thumb:

"That's the place where Mr. Braithwaite was drowned. Came down here from
camp to catch a mess o' trout for his supper and fell in--from the far
bank."

"Couldn't he swim?" Ballard asked.

"They all say he could. Anyhow, it looks as if he might 'a' got out o'
that little mill-pond easy enough. But he didn't. They found his fishing
tackle on the bank, and him down at the foot of the second rapid
below--both arms broke and the top of his head caved in, like he'd been
run through a rock crusher. They can say what they please; I ain't
believin' the river done it."

"What do you believe?" Ballard was looking across to a collection of low
buildings and corrals--evidently the headquarters of the old cattle
king's ranch outfit--nestling in a sheltered cove beyond the stream, and
his question was a half-conscious thought slipping into speech.

"I believe this whole blame' job is a hoodoo," was the prompt rejoinder.
And then, with the freedom born of long service in the unfettered areas
where discipline means obedience but not servility, the man added: "I
wouldn't be standin' in your shoes this minute for all the money the
Arcadia Company could pay me, Mr. Ballard."

Ballard was young, fit, vigorous, and in abounding health. Moreover, he
was a typical product of an age which scoffs at superstition and is
impatient of all things irreducible to the terms of algebraic formulas.
But here and now, on the actual scene of the fatalities, the "two sheer
accidents and a commonplace tragedy" were somewhat less easily dismissed
than when he had thus contemptuously named them for Gardiner in the
Boston railway station. Notwithstanding, he was quite well able to shake
off the little thrill of disquietude and to laugh at Hoskins's vicarious
anxiety.

"I wasn't raised in the woods, Hoskins, but there was plenty of tall
timber near enough to save me from being scared by an owl," he
asseverated. Then, as a towering derrick head loomed gallows-like in the
gathering dusk, with a white blotch of masonry to fill the ravine over
which it stood sentinel: "Is that our ca