Without hearing him Patty picked up the pen, and as she wrote, her
hand trembled so that she could scarcely form the letters. At last it
was done, and the register once again swung the book and read the
freshly penned words.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he exclaimed, when he had finished.

The blood had rushed back into the girl's face and she was regarding
him with shining eyes. "What's the matter? Isn't it right? Because if
it isn't you can show me how to do it, and I'll fix it."

"Oh it's right--all right." He was eying her quizzically. "Only it's
blamed funny. That there's the claim Vil Holland just relinquished."

"_Just relinquished!_" gasped the girl, reaching out and shaking the
old man's sleeve in her excitement. "What do you mean? Tell me!"

"Mean just what I said--here's the entry."

"Vil--Holland--just--relinquished," she repeated, in a dazed voice.
"When did he file it?"

"I don't recollect--it was back in the winter, or spring." The man
began to turn the pages slowly backward. "Here it is, March, the
thirteenth."

"Why, that was before I came out here!"

"How?"

"Why did he relinquish?" The words rushed eagerly from her lips, and
she awaited breathless, for the answer.

"It wasn't no good, I guess, or he found a better one--that's most
generally why they relinquish."

"No good! Found a better one!" From the chaos of conflicting ideas the
girl's thoughts began to take definite form. "The stakes in the ground
were _his_ stakes. Her father had never staked--would never have
staked until ready to file."

Gradually it dawned upon her that, without knowing it was her
father's, Vil Holland had staked and filed the claim. It was his. He
did not know its value as her father had. He believed it to be
worthless, but when he learned, only last night, back there in the
cabin on Monte's Creek, that it was really of enormous value--that it
was the claim Rod Sinclair had staked his reputation on, the claim
for which Rod Sinclair's daughter had sought all summer--when he
learned this he had relinquished--that she might come into her own!
Hot tears filled her eyes and caused the objects in the little room to
blur and swim together in hopeless jumble. She knew, now, the meaning
of his furious ride, and why he had changed horses at Thompson's. And
_this_ was the man she had doubted! She, alone of all who knew him,
had doubted him. Her cheeks burned with the shame of it. Not once, but
again and again, she had do