on
the ranch, and Howard rode this time on his own errand. But, before
starting for Sanchia's Town, he slipped into the ranchhouse and shaved
and changed to a new shirt and chaps and recently blackened boots.
Thereafter he brushed his best black hat. Then from a bottom drawer of
his old bureau, where it was hidden under a pile of clothing, he
brought out a parcel which had come with him from a store in San Juan.

As good a way as any to see Roberts in Sanchia's Town led by way of the
Longstreet camp on Last Ridge. Howard took the winding trail up which
his horse could climb to the plateau, and once on the level land came
swooping down on the well-remembered spot joyously. The spot itself
was hidden from him by the grove of stunted pines until he came within
a couple of hundred yards of it. Then he jerked his horse down to a
standstill and sat staring before him incredulously. The cabin was
gone quite as though there had never been a cabin there in all time.

At first he wouldn't believe his eyes. Then swiftly his wonderment
altered to consternation. They had gone! Helen and her father had
gone. Carr had prevailed upon them; Howard had not come to see; by now
they were flying eastward upon the speeding overland train, or perhaps
were already in New York.

The splendour of the day died; the joyousness went out of his heart; he
sat staring at the emptiness before him, then at the parcel in brown
paper clutched so foolishly in his hand. He looked all about him;
through the trees as though he expected to see Helen's laughing face
watching him; across the broken ridges beyond the flat; down into his
own valley. Down there, too, the glory had passed. When he had stood
here with Helen and they two had looked across the valley lands
together, it had been to him like the promised land. Now it was so
much dirt and rock and grass with cows and horses browsing stupidly
across all of it.

For a long time he sat very still. Then his face hardened.

'If she has gone, then I am going, too,' he told himself. 'And I am
going to bring her back.'

He turned his horse and rode swiftly to Sanchia's Town. They would
have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad.
In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp. In his
present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new
settlement. Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have
been amazed at what he saw about