plainly hesitated for a next remark.

"How'd you like it there?" he asked lamely, at length. "I thought none
of you fellows ever went there."

"Fine timber," answered Bob, cheerfully. "We don't usually. Somebody
does though. California John told me that trail was old and out of use;
but it's been used a lot. Who gets up there?"

"The boys drive in some cattle occasionally," replied Martin, with an
effort.

Bob stared in surprise. He knew this was not so, and started to speak,
but thought better of it. After he had left the store, he looked back.
Martin was gazing after him, a frown between his brows.

Before he left town a half-dozen of the mountain men had asked him, with
an obvious attempt to make the question casual, how he liked the Basin,
how long he thought his work would keep him there. Each, as he turned
away, followed him with that long, speculative, brooding look. Always,
heretofore, his relations with these mountain people had been easy,
sympathetic and cordial. Now all at once, without reason, they held him
at arm's length and regarded him with suspicious if not hostile eyes.

Puzzling over this he rode back up the road past the Power House. Thence
issued Oldham to hail him. He pulled up.

"I hear you're estimating the timber in the Basin," said the gray man,
with more appearance of disturbance than Bob had ever seen him display.

Bob acknowledged the accuracy of his statement.

"Indeed!" said Oldham, pulling at his clipped moustache, and after a
little, "Indeed!" he repeated.

So the news had run ahead of him. Bob began to think the news important,
but for some reason at which he could not as yet guess. This conviction
was strengthened by the fact that from the two mountain cabins he passed
on his way to the beginning of the trail, men lounged out to talk with
him, and in each case the question, craftily rendered casual, was put to
him as to his business in the Basin. Before one of these cabins stood a
sweating horse.

"Look here," he demanded of the Carrolls, "why all this interest about
our being in the Basin? Every man-jack asks me. What's the point?"

Old man Carroll stroked his long beard.

"Do they so?" he drawled comfortably. "Well, I reckon little things make
news, as they say, when you're in a wild country. They ain't been no
work done in the Basin for so long that we're all just nat'rally
interested; that's all."

He looked Bob tranquilly in the eye with the limpid gaze of innocenc