west, a twist of the ledge that hid the
cabin completely in a niche. It was the window on the south side that
betrayed it.

So here was what the boulder concealed,--and yet, Casey was not
satisfied with the discovery. Unconsciously he reached for his gun.
This, he told himself, must be the secret habitation of the fiend who
shot from rim-rocks with terrible precision at harmless prospectors and
their burros.

Casey squinted up at the sun and turned his level gaze again upon the
cabin. Reason told him that the man with the rifle was still watching
for a pot shot at him and Barney, and that there was nothing whatever
to indicate the presence of only one man in the camp below. Had he been
glimpsed once during the climb, he would have been fired upon; he would
never have been given the chance to gain the top and find this cabin.

The place looked deserted. His practical, everyday mind told him it
was empty for the time being. But he felt queer and uncomfortable,
nevertheless. He sneaked along the ledge to the cabin, flattened
himself against the corner next the gray boulder and waited there for a
minute. He felt the flesh stiffening on his jaws as he crept up to the
window to look in. By standing on his toes, Casey's eyes came on a
level with the lowest inch of glass,--the window was so high.

Just at first Casey could not see much. Then, when his eyes had
adjusted themselves to the half twilight within, his mind at first
failed to grasp what he saw. Gradually a dimly sensed dread took hold
of him, and grew while he stood there peering in at commonplace things
which should have given him no feeling save perhaps a faint surprise.

A fairly clean, tiny room he saw, with a rough, narrow bed in one
corner and a box table at its head. From the ceiling hung a lantern
with the chimney smoked on one side and the warped, pole rafter above
it slightly blackened to show how long the lantern had hung there
lighted. A door opposite the tiny window was closed, and there was no
latch or fastening on the inner side. An Indian blanket covered half
the floor space, and in the corner opposite the bed was a queer,
drumlike thing of sheet iron with a pipe running through the wall; some
heating arrangement, Casey guessed.

In the center of the room, facing the window, a woman sat in a wooden
rocking chair and rocked. A pale old woman with dark hollows under her
eyes that were fixed upon the pattern of the Indian rug. Her hair