, and when I went in the door he come up standing and he
had his gun in his hand and it was cocked. And, Al, he looked mean.'

There was a pause and a silence. Sandy Weaver might be lying, and then
again he might not.

'I got nothing against Jim, and it didn't drop on me right then that he
was out to start a row. And, being full of what I saw up there, I
spilled him the yarn. And I wish you could have had a look into that
man's face! He's no albino to speak on, and yet when I got half-way
through he looked it. His face was as white as a rag and his eyes
bulged out like he was scared, and the sweat come out on his head and
all over, I guess, and he kept looking over his shoulder all the time
like the devil was after him. And when I showed him what I found on
the rock by the dead calf, he just asks me one question. He says,
"Sandy, what way was them tracks pointed?" And when I tells him it
looked like they was pointed this way--well, Jim was gone!'

'You lying devil!' shouted Bandy hilariously.

But Howard, wondering, demanded:

'What was it you found on the rock, Sandy?'

Sandy yanked it from his pocket. They crowded closer and some one
struck a match. It was a bit of buckskin, and in the buckskin was a
little heap of raw gold.

Chapter XI

Seeking

Alan Howard got a lantern from the wagon and said briefly to Sandy
Weaver: 'Show me the place.' For he knew that for once Weaver was not
lying. When together they came to the hollow where the dead calf lay
he dismounted, made a light and verified all that had been told him.
He saw dimly the track of the bare human foot where Sandy had left it
undisturbed; he passed from that to the other tracks. As his cowboy
had said, they resembled a wolf's but were unusually large. As Howard
noted for himself, the front feet had made the larger, deeper imprint;
the hind tracks were narrower, longer, less clearly defined.

'It carries the bulk of its weight up forward,' he said thoughtfully.
'It would be heavy-chested, big-shouldered, slim in the barrel and
small in the hips. And it is the same It that made those other tracks
by Superstition Pool--where some gent was scared half out of his hide
and clean out of any desire to linger or eat supper.'

'What's all that?' demanded Sandy. 'Seen tracks like that before?'

Howard nodded and went back to his horse in silence. And silent he
remained during the ride back to camp, despite Sandy's chatter. For
alr