The Gold Girl

CHAPTER I

A HORSEMAN OF THE HILLS

Patty Sinclair reined in her horse at the top of a low divide and
gazed helplessly around her. The trail that had grown fainter and
fainter with its ascent of the creek bed disappeared entirely at the
slope of loose rock and bunch grass that slanted steeply to the
divide. In vain she scanned the deeply gored valley that lay before
her and the timbered slopes of the mountains for sign of human
habitation. Her horse lowered his head and snipped at the bunch grass.
Stiffly the girl dismounted. She had been in the saddle since early
noon with only two short intervals of rest when she had stopped to
drink and to bathe her fare in the deliciously cold waters of mountain
streams--and now the trail had melted into the hills, and the broad
shadows of mountains were lengthening. Every muscle of her body ached
at the unaccustomed strain, and she was very hungry. She envied her
horse his enjoyment of the bunch grass which he munched with much
tongueing of the bit and impatient shaking of the head. With bridle
reins gripped tightly she leaned wearily against the saddle.

"I'm lost," she murmured. "Just plain _lost_. Surely I must have come
fifty miles, and I followed their directions exactly, and now I'm
tired, and stiff, and sore, and hungry, and lost." A grim little smile
tightened the corners of her mouth. "But I'm glad I came. If Aunt
Rebecca could see me now! Wouldn't she just gloat? 'I told you so, my
dear, just as I often told your poor father, to have nothing whatever
to do with that horrible country of wild Indians, and ferocious
beasts, and desperate characters.'" Hot tears blurred her eyes at the
thought of her father. "This is the country he loved, with its
mountains and its woods and its deep mysterious valleys--and I want to
love it, too. And I _will_ love it! I'll find his mine if it takes me
all the rest of my life. And I'll show the people back home that he
was right, that he did know that the gold was here, and that he
wasn't just a visionary and a ne'er-do-well!"

A rattle of loose stones set her heart thumping wildly and caused her
to peer down the back trail where a horseman was slowly ascending the
slope. The man sat loosely in his saddle with the easy grace of the
slack rein rider. A roll-brim Stetson with its crown boxed into a peak
was pushed slightly back upon his head, and his legs were encased to
the thighs in battered leather chaps whose laci