esterday, a yearling beef had been
slaughtered; the carcass lay half hidden by the bushes.

'Now who the hell did that for me?' cried out the man angrily. 'Look
here; he's killed a beef for a couple of steaks. He's taken that and
left the rest for the buzzards. The low-down, hog-hearted son of a
scurvy coyote.'

Helen held back, frightened at what she read in his face. Her father
came up with her and demanded:

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'Some one has killed one of his cows,' she whispered, catching hold of
his arm. 'I believe he would kill the man who did it.'

Howard was looking about him for signs to tell whence the marauder had
come, whither gone. He picked up a fresh rib bone, that had been
hacked from its place with a heavy knife and then gnawed and broken as
by a wolf's savage teeth. He noted something else; he went to it
hurriedly. Upon a conspicuous rock, held in place by a smaller stone,
was a small rawhide pouch. It was heavy in his palm; he opened it and
poured its contents into his palm. And these contents he showed to
Longstreet and Helen, looking at them wonderingly.

'The gent took what he wanted, but he paid for it,' he said slowly, 'in
enough raw gold to buy half a dozen young beeves! That's fair enough,
isn't it? The chances are he was in a hurry.'

'Maybe,' suggested Helen quickly, 'he was the same man whose camp fire
we found. _He_ was in a hurry.'

Howard pondered but finally shook his head. 'No; that man had bacon
and coffee to leave behind him. It was some other jasper.'

Longstreet was absorbed in another interest. He took the unminted gold
into his own hands, fingering it and studying it.

'It is around here everywhere, my dear,' he told Helen with his old
placid assurance. 'It is quite as I have said; if you want fish, look
for them in the sea; if you seek gold, not in insignificant quantities,
but in a great, thick, rich ledge, come out toward the Last Ridge
country.'

He returned the raw metal to Howard, who dropped it into its bag and
the bag into his pocket. Silent now as each one found company in his
own thoughts, they moved down the slope and into the valley.

Chapter IV

In Desert Valley

The world is an abiding-place of glory. He who cannot see it dyed and
steeped in colourful hues owes it to his own happiness to gird up his
loins and move on into another of the splendid chambers of the vast
house God has given us; if the daily view before