he'll go straight and put his finger on you."

"You don't mean it!"

"I just do, though. Weather's nothing to him--elemental conditions is
nothing to him--he don't even take notice of them."

"Oh, come! Dark? Rain? Snow? Hey?"

"It's all the same to him. He don't give a damn."

"Oh, say--including fog, per'aps?"

"Fog! he's got an eye 't can plunk through it like a bullet."

"Now, boys, honor bright, what's he giving me?"

"It's a fact!" they all shouted. "Go on, Wells-Fargo."

"Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can
slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book--yes, sir, a
dozen of them--and take the page in your memory, and he'll start out and
go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right
page, and call it off, and never make a mistake."

"He must be the devil!"

"More than one has thought it. Now I'll tell you a perfectly wonderful
thing that he done. The other night he--"

There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open,
and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp's one white woman in the
lead and crying,

"My child! my child! she's lost and gone! For the love of God help me to
find Archy Stillman; we've hunted everywhere!"

Said the barkeeper:

"Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Hogan, and don't worry. He asked for a bed
three hours ago, tuckered out tramping the trails the way he's always
doing, and went upstairs. Ham Sandwich, run up and roust him out; he's
in No. 14."

The youth was soon downstairs and ready. He asked Mrs. Hogan for
particulars.

"Bless you, dear, there ain't any; I wish there was. I put her to sleep
at seven in the evening, and when I went in there an hour ago to go to
bed myself, she was gone. I rushed for your cabin, dear, and you wasn't
there, and I've hunted for you ever since, at every cabin down the
gulch, and now I've come up again, and I'm that distracted and scared
and heart-broke; but, thanks to God, I've found you at last, dear heart,
and you'll find my child. Come on! come quick!"

"Move right along; I'm with you, madam. Go to your cabin first."

The whole company streamed out to join the hunt. All the southern half
of the village was up, a hundred men strong, and waiting outside, a
vague dark mass sprinkled with twinkling lanterns. The mass fell into
columns by threes and fours to accommodate itself to the narrow road,
and strode briskly along southward in the wake of the le