f surprise.

"Holy Moses! They had some buildings and plant there, eh, Dick?"

The other, as if remembering all that was represented in the scene
below, did not answer. He was thinking of the days when his father and
he had been friendly, and of how that restless, grasping, conquering
dreamer had built many hopes, even as he squandered many dollars, on
the Croix d'Or. It was to produce millions. It was to be one of the
greatest gold mines in the world. All that it required was more
development. Now, it was to have a huge mill to handle vast quantities
of low-grade ore; then all it needed was cheaper power, so it must
have electric equipment. Again the milling results were not good, and
what it demanded was the cyanide process.

And so it had been, for years that he could still remember, and always
it led his father on and on, deferring or promising hope, to come, at
last, to this! A great, idle plant with some of its buildings falling
into decay, its roadways obliterated by the brush growth that was
creeping back through the clearings as Nature reconquered her own, and
its huge waste dumps losing their ugliness under the green moss.

It seemed useless to think of anything more than an occasional pay
chute. Yet, as he thought of it, hope revived; for there had been pay
chutes of marvelous wealth. Why, men still talked of the Bonanza Chute
that yielded eighty thousand dollars in four days' blasting before it
worked out! Maybe there were others, but that was what his father and
Sloan had always expected, and never found!

His meditations were cut short by a shout from below. A man appeared,
small in the distance, on the flat, or "yard" of what seemed to be the
blacksmith shop.

"Wonder who that can be?" speculated Bill, drawing his hat rim farther
over his eyes.

"I don't know," answered Townsend, puzzled. "I never heard of their
having any watchmen here. But we'll soon find out."

They started down the hillside at a faster pace, the tired animals
surmising, with their curiously acute instinct, that this must be the
end of the journey and hastening to have it over with. As they broke
through a screen of brush and came out to the edge of what had been a
clearing back of a huge log bunk-house, the man who had shouted came
rapidly forward to meet them. There was a certain shiftless, sullen,
yet authoritative air about him as he spoke.

"What do you fellers want here?" he asked. "I s'pose you know that no
one's allo