the waters raged
with a deafening roar. No man ventured into that wild gorge. They
abandoned the dugout. Bill slung the sack of gold and the bale of furs
on his back.

"It's the last lap, Hazel," said he. "We'll leave the rest of it for
the first Siwash that happens along."

So they set out bravely to trudge the remaining distance. And as the
fortunes of the trail sometimes befall, they raised an Indian camp on
the bank of the river at the mouth of the canon. A ten-dollar bill
made them possessors of another canoe, and an hour later the roofs of
Hazleton cropped up above the bank.

"Oh, Bill," Hazel called from the bow. "Look! There's the same old
steamer tied to the same old bank. We've been gone a year, and yet the
world hasn't changed a mite. I wonder if Hazleton has taken a Rip van
Winkle sleep all this time?"

"No fear," he smiled. "I can see some new houses--quite a few, in
fact. And look--by Jiminy! They're working on the grade. That
railroad, remember? See all those teams? Maybe I ought to have taken
up old Hackaberry on that town-lot proposition, after all."

"Fiddlesticks!" she retorted, with fine scorn of Hazleton's real-estate
possibilities. "You could buy the whole town with this."

She touched the sack with her toe.

"Not quite," Bill returned placidly. "I wouldn't, anyway. We'll get a
better run for our money than that. I hope old Hack didn't forget to
attend to that ranch business for me."

He drove the canoe alongside a float. A few loungers viewed them with
frank curiosity. Bill set out the treasure sack and the bale of furs,
and tied the canoe.

"A new hotel, by Jove!" he remarked, when upon gaining the level of the
town a new two-story building blazoned with a huge sign its function as
a hostelry. "Getting quite metropolitan in this neck of the woods.
Say, little person, do you think you can relish a square meal? Planked
steak and lobster salad--huh? I wonder if they _could_ rustle a salad
in this man's town? Say, do you know I'm just beginning to find out
how hungry I am for the flesh-pots. What's the matter with a little
variety?--as Lin MacLean said. Aren't you, hon?"

She was; frankly so. For long, monotonous months she had been
struggling against just such cravings, impossible of realization, and
therefore all the more tantalizing. She had been a year in the
wilderness, and the wilderness had not only lost its glamour, but had
become a thing to flee fr