ing
out all of Bob's best stories. When they stopped in sight of the streak
of blue sky through the breach in the mighty wall that had once
imprisoned the ancient lake, he was silent for some time, while he
surveyed this grandeur of the heights with smiling contemplation, at
intervals rubbing the palms of his hands together in a manner habitual
with him when he was particularly pleased.

"I guess the same idea has struck you that strikes everybody at sight of
that, seh!" said Bob.

"Yes, a dam might be practical," Prather answered. "But it would take a
lot of capital--a lot of capital!"

On the way back they stopped before a dilapidated shanty near the
foothills. In the midst of a littered yard old man Lefferts, half dozing,
occupied a broken chair.

"Since the Doge came old man Lefferts has had to do no work at all. A
Mexican looks after him. But it hasn't made him any happier," Bob
explained as they approached.

"Howdy yourself?" growled Lefferts in answer to Bob's greeting.

"He seems to be a character!" whispered Prather to Bob, as he smiled at
the prospect. "To confess the truth, I am a little saddle sore and tired.
I didn't get much riding in Goldfield. I think I'll stop and rest and get
acquainted."

"You won't get much satisfaction but growls."

"That will be all the more fun for me," rejoined Prather. "But don't let
me keep you."

"No. I must be going on. I've got some things to look after before
nightfall," said Bob, while Prather, in a humor proof against any hermit
cantankerousness, rode into the yard.

When he returned after dark he said, laughingly, that he had enjoyed
himself, though the conversation was all on one side. The next morning he
decided to take up the plot of land adjoining Jack's.

"But I shall not be able to begin work for a few weeks," he said. "I must
go to Goldfield to settle up my affairs before I begin my new career."

"If Jack ever comes back I wonder what he will say to his new neighbor!"
Little Rivers wondered.

XIX

LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES

To Mary Ewold the pass was a dividing line between two appeals. The
Little Rivers side, with the green patch of oasis in the distance, had a
message of peaceful enjoyment of what fortune had provided for her. Under
its spell she saw herself content to live within garden walls forever in
the land that had given her life, grateful for the trickles of
intelligence that came by mail from the outside world.

The other sid