e had gone,
while leaning breathless against the balustrade she gazed after him.

Geoffrey did not glance behind him until, when some distance from the
ranch, he reined his horse in, and wiped his forehead. He had yielded
at last to an uncontrollable impulse which was perhaps part of his
inheritance from the old moss troopers, who had carried off their
brides on the crupper. As he walked his horse, a muffled beat of hoofs
came up the trail, and he fancied he heard a voice say: "The
twentieth--I'll be ready."

Then a mounted figure appearing for a moment, vanished among the firs.
Geoffrey, turning back to camp, noticed that beside the hollows the
hoofs had made, there was the print of human feet in the powdery snow.

"There is nothing to bring any rancher down this way, and a man must
have walked beside the rider," he speculated. "Who on earth could it
be?" Dismissing the incident from his mind, he went on his way. It
was only afterwards that the significance of the footprints became
apparent.

There was a light in Geoffrey's quarters when at last he approached
them, and the foreman met him at the door. "That blame waster, Black,
has come back. Rode in quietly after dark, and none of the boys have
set eyes on him," he said; and, noting his master's surprise, he added
with a chuckle, "I put him in there for safety, and waited right here
to take care of him."

Geoffrey went into the shanty, carefully closed the door, and turned
somewhat sternly upon the visitor. Black's outer appearance suggested
a degree of prosperity, but his face was anxious as he said, "I guess
you're surprised to see me?"

"I am," was the answer. "In view of the fact that it is my duty to
hand you over to the nearest magistrate, my surprise is hardly
astonishing."

"No," agreed Black, "it is not. Still, I don't think you'll surrender
me. Anyway, you've got to listen to a little story first. You didn't
hear the whole of it last time. I figure I can trust you to do the
square thing."

"Be quick, then." Geoffrey leaned against the table while his visitor
began:

"You've heard of the Blue Bird mine, and how one of the men who
relocated the lapsed claim was found in the river with a gash, which a
rock might have made, in the back of his head? Of course you have.
Well, it was me and Bob Morgan who located the Blue Bird. Morgan was a
good prospector, but the indications were hazy, and he got drunk when
he could. I knew mighty li