ad its canopy
overhead. Here Bob and Elliott turned loose their horses and made their
camp. After lunch they lay on their backs and smoked. Through a notch in
the trees showed a very white mountain against a very blue sky. The sun
warmed them gratefully. Birds sang. Squirrels scampered. Their horses
stood dozing, ears and head down-drooped, eyes half-closed, one hind leg
tucked up.

"Confound it!" cried Elliott suddenly, following his unspoken thought.
"I feel like a bad little boy stealing jam! By night I'll be scared. If
those woods over behind that screen aren't full of large, dignified gods
that disapprove of me being so cheerful and contented and light-minded
and frivolous, I miss my guess!"

"Same here!" said Bob with, a short laugh. "Let's get busy."

They started out that very afternoon from the corner California John had
showed them. It took all that day and most of the following to define
and blaze the boundaries of the first tract they intended to estimate.
In the accomplishment of this they found nothing out of the ordinary;
but when they began to move forward across the forty, they were soon
brought to a halt by the unexpected.

"Look here!" Bob shouted to his companion; "here's a brand new corner
away off the line."

Elliott came over. Bob showed him a stake set neatly in a pile of rocks.

"It's not a very old one, either," said Bob. "Now what do you make of
that?"

Elliott had been spying about him.

"There's another just like it over on the hill," said he. "I should call
it the stakes of a mining claim. There ought to be a notice somewhere."

They looked about and soon came across the notice in question. It was
made out in the name of a man neither Bob nor Elliott had ever heard of
before.

"I suppose that's his ledge," remarked Elliott, kicking a little
outcrop, "but it looks like mighty slim mining to me!"

They proceeded with their estimating. In due time they came upon another
mining claim, and then a third.

"This is getting funny!" remarked Elliott. "Looks as though somebody
expected to make a strike for fair. More timber than mineral here, I
should say."

"That's it!" cried Bob, slapping his leg; "I'd just about forgotten!
This must be what Baker was talking about one evening over at camp. He
had some scheme for getting some timber and water rights somewhere under
the mineral act. I didn't pay so very much attention to it at the time,
and it had slipped my mind. But this must be i