ot so bad for a start-off," she answered with an absence
of enthusiasm that dashed him from his pose of self-abnegation.

"You don't realize what that means," he complained.

"It means, jilt Miss Nicotine in haste, and repent at leisure."

"You're ragging me! You ought to be particularly nice to me. I did it
for you."

"Thanks awfully. But I didn't ask you to do it, you know."

"Oh, now, that's hardly--when I did it because of what you said."

"Well, then, I promise to be nice to you until events do us part. That
will be in about five minutes. Over there is Dry Fork Gulch. The
waterhole is just down around this hill."

Ashton took his ardent gaze off the girl's face long enough to glance
to his left. He recognized the tremendous gorge in the face of the
mountain side that he had tried to ascend the previous day. It ran in
with a moderately inclined bottom for nearly a mile, and then scaled
up to the top of High Mesa in steep slopes and sheer ledges.

His eyes followed the dry gravelly creek bed around to the right, and
he nodded: "Yes, my camp is just over the corner of those crags. But
surely, Miss Knowles, you will not end our acquaintance there."

She met his appealing look with a level glance. "Seriously, Mr.
Ashton, don't you think you had better move camp to another section?
It seems to me you have done quite enough unseasonable deer hunting."

Without waiting for him to reply, she urged her horse into a lope. His
own mount was too jaded for a quick start. When he overtook the girl
she had rounded the craggy hill on their right and was in sight of a
scattered grove of boxelders below a dike of dark colored trap rock
that outcropped across the bed of the creek.

Above the natural dam made by this dike the valley was bedded up with
sand and large gravel washed down by the torrential rush of spring
freshets. Below it the same wild floods, leaping down in a twenty-foot
fall, had gouged out a pothole so wide and deep that it was never
empty of water even in the driest seasons.

CHAPTER V

INTO THE DEPTHS

At the top of the bank made by the dike the girl pointed with her
quirt down to the rock-rimmed pool edge where a pair of riders were
just swinging out of their saddles.

"Hello, Daddy! We're coming, Kid," she called, and she turned to
explain to Ashton. "They came around the other end of the hills; a
longer way but better going. How's this? Thought you said you were
camped here."

"Yes, of