ting rays lingered long enough to give me
sight of a glittering patch on the gray stone shelf below. While I
stared the sun withdrew its fading beams from the whole face of the
cliff, but even in the duller light a glint of yellow showed dimly, a
pin point of gold in the deepening shadow.

Gold! I drew back from the rim of Writing-On-the-Stone, that set of
whispered phrases echoing in my ears. Mac caught my eye and grinned.
"_Gold--raw gold--on the rock--above._" I mouthed the words parrotlike,
and he nodded comprehendingly.

"Oh, thunder!" I exclaimed. "Do you reckon _that's_ what he meant?"

"What else?" Mac reasoned. "They'd mark the place somehow--and aren't
those his exact words? What dummies we were not to look on those ledges
before. You can't see the surface of them from the flat; and we might
have known they would hardly put a mark where it could be seen by any
pilgrim who happened to ride through that bottom."

"Hope you're right," I grunted optimistically.

"We'll know beyond a doubt, in the morning," Mac declared. "To-night we
won't do anything but eat, drink, and sleep as sound as possible, for
to-morrow we may have one hell of a time. I prefer to have a few hours
of daylight ahead of us when we raise that _cache_. Things are apt to
tighten, and I don't like a rumpus in the dark. Just now I'm hungry. If
that stuff is there, it will keep. Come on to camp; our troubles are
either nearly over or just about to begin in earnest."

We followed the upland past the end of the Stone till we found a slope
that didn't require wings for descent. If Hicks or Gregory wondered at
our arrival from the opposite direction in which we should have
appeared, they didn't betray any unseemly curiosity. Supper and a
cigarette or two consumed the twilight hour, and when dark shut down we
took to our blankets and dozed through the night.

At daybreak we breakfasted. Without a word to any one MacRae picked up
his carbine and walked out of camp. I followed, equally silent. It was
barely a hundred yards to the ledge, and I caught myself wishing it were
a good deal farther--out of range of those watchful eyes. I couldn't
help wondering how it would feel to be potted at the moment of
discovery.

"I thought I'd leave them both behind, and let them take it out in
guessing," Mac explained, when we stood under the rock shelf upon which
we had looked down the evening before. "We're right under their noses,
so they won't do anything t