guess that
narrows it down pretty close, doesn't it, Bill?"

"Close?" asked Bill. "Close, did you say?" "Well, we know the trail,"
said Ronicky cheerily. "All we've got to do is to locate the shack
that stands beside that trail. For old mountain men like us that ought
to be nothing. What sort of a stream is this East River, though?"

Bill Gregg looked at his companion in disgust. He had become so
used to regarding Doone as entirely infallible that it amazed and
disheartened him to find that there was one topic so large about which
Ronicky knew nothing. Perhaps the whole base for the good cheer of
Ronicky was his ignorance of everything except the mountain desert.

"A river's a river," went on Ronicky blandly. "And it's got a town
beside it, and in the town there's a house that looks over the water.
Why, Bill, she's as good as found!"

"New York runs about a dozen miles along the shore of that river,"
groaned Bill Gregg.

"A dozen miles!" gasped Ronicky. He turned in his seat and stared at
his companion. "Bill, you sure are making a man-sized joke. There
ain't that much city in the world. A dozen miles of houses, one right
next to the other?"

"Yep, and one on top of the other. And that ain't all. Start about the
center of that town and swing a twenty-mile line around it, and the
end of the line will be passing through houses most of the way."

Ronicky Doone glared at him in positive alarm. "Well," he said,
"that's different."

"It sure is. I guess we've come on a wild-goose chase, Ronicky,
hunting for a girl named Smith that lives on the bank of the East
River!" He laughed bitterly.

"How come you know so much about New York?" asked Ronicky, eager to
turn the subject of conversation until he could think of something to
cheer his friend.

"Books," said Bill Gregg.

After that there was a long lull in the conversation. That night
neither of them slept long, for every rattle and sway of the train was
telling them that they were rocking along toward an impossible task.
Even the cheer of Ronicky had broken down the next morning, and,
though breakfast in the diner restored some of his confidence, he was
not the man of the day before.

"Bill," he confided, on the way back to their seats from the diner,
"there must be something wrong with me. What is it?"

"I dunno," said Bill. "Why?"

"People been looking at me."

"Ain't they got a right to do that?"

"Sure they have, in a way. But, when they don't seem