ed that
little devils of mischief at times danced in those orbs.

Into the hills the trail wound across gulches and along the shoulders
of elephant humps. It brought him into a country of stunted pines and
red sandstone, and so to the summit of a ridge which formed part of the
rim of a saucer-shaped basin. He looked down into an open park hedged
in on the far side by mountains. Scrubby pines straggled up the slopes
from arroyos that cleft the hills. By divers unknown paths these led
into the range beyond.

A clump of quaking aspens was the chief landmark in the bed of the
park. Though this was the immediate destination of Mr. Dingwell, since
the hoofprints he was following plunged straight down toward the grove,
yet he took certain precautions before venturing nearer. He made sure
that the 45-70 Winchester that lay across the saddle was in working
order. Also he kept along the rim of the saucer-shaped park till he
came to a break where a creek tumbled down in a white foam through a
ravine.

"It's a heap better to be safe than to be sorry," he explained to
himself cheerfully. "They call this Lonesome Park, and maybe so it
deserves its name to-day. But you never can tell, Dave. We'll make
haste slowly if you don't mind."

Along the bank of the creek he descended, letting his sure-footed
cowpony pick its own way while he gave strict attention to the scenery.
At a bend of the stream he struck again the trail of the riders he had
been following and came from there directly to the edge of the aspen
clump.

Apparently his precautions were unnecessary. He was alone. There
could be no doubt of that. Only the tracks of feet and the ashes of a
dead fire showed that within a few days a party had camped here.

Dingwell threw his bridle to the ground and with his rifle tucked under
his arm examined the tracks carefully. Sometimes he was down on hands
and knees peering at the faint marks of which he was reading the story.
Foot by foot he quartered over the sand, entirely circling the grove
before he returned to the ashes of the dead fire. Certain facts he had
discovered. One was that the party which had camped here had split up
and taken to the hills by different trails instead of as a unit. Still
another was that so far as he could see there had been no digging in or
near the grove.

It was raining more definitely now, so that the distant peaks were
hidden in a mist. In the lee of the aspens it was still dr