; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram. "I
may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson," he said, "but a man I met down on
the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here. He said
that he had some sort of a claim up here that his brother left him, and
though it was a pocket country, he thought there'd soon be a great rush
up this way."

"I hardly know who it could have been that you met," Neilson began
doubtfully. "He didn't tell you his name--"

"Melville. I believe that was it. And if you'll tell me how to find him,
I'll try to go on to-night. I brought him some of his belongings from
Snowy Gulch--"

"Melville, eh? I guess I know who you mean now. But no--I don't know of
any claim unless it's over east, beyond here. Maybe further down the
river."

Ben made no reply at once; but his mind sped like lightning. Of course
Neilson was lying about the claim: he knew perfectly that at that moment
he was occupying one of Hiram Melville's cabins. He was a first-class
actor, too--his voice indicating scarcely no acquaintance with or
interest in the name.

"He hasn't come up this way?" Ben asked casually.

"He hasn't come through here that I know of. Of course I'm working at my
claim--with my partners--and he might have gone through without our
seeing him. It seems rather unlikely."

Ben was really puzzled now. If Ezram had already made his presence known
and was camping somewhere in the hills about, there was no reason
immediately evident why Neilson should deny his presence. Ben found
himself wondering whether by any chance Ezram had been delayed along the
trail, perhaps had even lost his way, and had not yet put in an
appearance.

"He told me, in the few minutes that I talked to him, that his cabin was
somewhere close to this one--I thought he said up this creek."

"There is a cabin up the creek a way," Neilson admitted, "but it isn't
the one he meant. It's on my claim, and my two partners are living in
it. But when he said near to this one, he might have meant ten miles.
That's the way we Northern men speak of distance."

There was nothing more to say, nothing to do at present. He said his
farewells to the girl, refused an invitation to pass the night in the
cabin, and made his way to the green bank of the stream. Four hundred
yards from the cabin, and perhaps a like number from the cabin of Ray
and Charley--obscured from both by the thickets--he pitched his camp.

In the cabin he had left Jeffery Neilson c