and I, carrying with us the expected letter for my father, set
off home again; little suspecting--as how should we suspect--that the
ore-thief, whoever he might be, was about to render us a service of
greater value by far than the ore and the cart and the pony combined.

We were jogging along on the homeward road, and were just rounding the
spur of Elkhorn Mountain which divided our valley from Sulphide, when
Joe suddenly laid his hand on my arm and cried: "Pull up, Phil. Stop a
minute."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Get down and come back a few steps," Joe answered; and on my joining
him, he pointed out to me in a sandy patch at the mouth of a steep draw
coming in from the left, some deeply-indented wheel-marks.

"Well, what of that, Joe?" said I, laughing. "Are you thinking you've
found the trail of the ore-thief?"

"No," Joe replied, "I'm not jumping at any such conclusion; but, at the
same time, it's possible. If the ore-thief started northward from the
Pelican, and the chances are he did, for we know he carried the sacks
across to the north side of Stony Gulch, this would be the natural place
for him to come down into the road; for it is plain to any one that he
could never get a loaded cart--or an empty one either, for that
matter--over the rocky ridge which crowns this spur. If he was making
his way north, he had to get into the road sooner or later, and this
gully was his last chance to come down."

"That's true," I assented; "and this cart--it's a two-wheeler, you
see--was heavily loaded. Look how it cuts into the sand."

"Yes," said Joe; "and it was drawn by one smallish horse, led by a man;
a big man, too: look at his tracks."

"But the ore-thief, Joe, had his feet wrapped up in rags, and these are
the marks of a number twelve boot."

"Well, you don't suppose the thief would walk over this rough mountain
with his feet wrapped up in rags, do you? In the dark, too. They'd be
catching against everything. No; he would take off the rags as soon as
he reached hard ground and throw them into the cart; for it is not to be
expected either that he would leave them lying on his trail to show
people which way he had gone."

"No, of course not. But which way did he go, Joe; across the road or
down it?"

"Down it. See. The wheel-tracks bear to the left. And if you want
evidence that he came down in the dark, here you are. Look how one wheel
skidded over this half-buried, water-worn boulder and slid off and