, which is near here, as they
compute distances in Wyoming."

"And Schaefer is leaving in the morning," reflected the doctor. "That
leaves but you and me unaccounted for. Are you going on to Meander
soon?"

"Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes."

"I've thought of going over there to feel things out, too," Dr. Slavens
went on. "This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wet
leather in the sun. They'll have nothing left of it but the stores, and
no business to sustain them until the country around here is settled.
That may be a long time yet. Still, there may be something around here
for me. I'm going to look into the possibilities tomorrow. And we'll
have at least another talk before we part?"

"Many more, I hope," she said.

Her answer presented an alluring lead for him to say more, but before he
could speak, even if minded to do it, she went on:

"This has been a pleasant experience, this camping in the clean, unused
country, and it would be a sort of Persian poet existence if we could go
on with it always; but of course we can't."

"It isn't all summer and fair skies here," he reminded her, "any more
than it is in--well, Persia. Twenty below in winter sometimes, Smith
said. Do you remember?"

"Yes," she sighed. "But it seems impossible."

"You wouldn't believe this little river could turn into a wild and
savage torrent, either, a few hundred yards along, if you had nothing to
judge it by but this quiet stretch," he returned. "But listen to it down
there, crashing against the rocks!"

"There's no news of that rash man who went into the canyon for the
newspaper?" Agnes asked.

"He must have lodged in there somewhere; they haven't picked him up on
the other side," he said, a thoughtful abstraction over him.

"I hope you've given up the thought of trying to explore it?"

"I haven't thought much about it lately," he replied; "but I'm of the
same opinion. I believe the difficulties of the canyon are greatly
exaggerated. In fact, as I told you before, the reward posted by that
newspaper looks to me like easy money."

"It wouldn't pay you if the reward were ten times as large," she
declared with a little argumentative heat.

"Perhaps not," said he, as if he had but a passing and shallow interest
in the subject.

Sitting there bareheaded to the wind, which was dropping down coldly
from the far mountains, he seemed to be in a brooding humor.

"The moon is late tonight," he noted. "