t to drag anything up.

After a wearisome time the road at last swung out on the flat, and so
across the meadow to the bridge. Feed was belly deep to the horses. The
bridge proved to be a suspension affair of wire cables, that swung
alarmingly until the horses had to straddle in order to stand at all.
Below it boiled the river, swirling, dashing, turning lazily and
mysteriously over its glass-green depths, the shimmers and folds of
eddies rising and swaying like air currents made visible.

They climbed out on solid ground. The road swung to the left and back,
following a contour to the slight elevation on which the houses stood.
Saleratus Bill, however, turned up a brief short-cut, which landed them
immediately on the main street.

Bob saw two stores, an office building and a small hotel, shaded by
wooden awnings. Beyond them, and opposite them, were substantial bunk
houses and dwelling houses, painted red, each with its elevated, roofed
verandah. Large trees, on either side, threw a shade fairly across the
thoroughfare. An iron pump and water trough in front of the hotel saved
the wayfarer from the necessity of riding his animals down to the river.
The vista at the end of the street showed a mill building on a distant
mountain side, with the rabbit-burrow dumps of many shafts and prospect
holes all about it.

They rode up the street past two or three of the houses, the hotel and
the office. Bob, peering in through the windows, saw tables and chairs,
old chromos and newer lithographs on the walls. Under the tree at the
side of the hotel hung a water _olla_ with a porcelain cup atop. Near
the back porch stood a screen meat safe.

But not a soul was in sight. The street was deserted, the houses empty,
the office unoccupied. As they proceeded Bob expected from one moment to
the next to see a door open, a figure saunter around a corner. Save for
the jays and squirrels, the place was absolutely empty.

For some minutes the full realization of this fact was slow in coming.
The village exhibited none of the symptoms of abandonment. The window
glass was whole; the furniture of such houses as Bob had glanced into
while passing stood in its accustomed places. A few strokes of the broom
might have made any one of them immediately fit for habitation. The
place looked less deserted than asleep; like one of the enchanted
palaces so dear to tales of magic. It would not have seemed greatly
wonderful to Bob to have seen the town s