ouble locating the mine and have to stay here all summer?"
she was thinking, and instantly recalling the Watts ranch with its air
of shiftless decay, the smelly Watts blankets in the overcrowded
sleeping room, the soggy meals, the tapping of chickens' bills upon
the floor, and the never ending voice of Ma Watts, she smiled. It was
a weak, forced little smile, at first, but it gradually widened into a
real smile as her eyes swept the little valley with its long vista of
pine-clad hills that reached upward to the sky, their mighty sides and
shoulders gored by innumerable rock-rimmed coulees and ravines.
Somewhere amid the silence of those mighty slopes and high-flung peaks
her father had found Eldorado--had wrested nature's secret from the
guardianship of the everlasting hills. Her heart swelled with the
pride of him. She was ashamed of that sudden welling of tears. The
feeling of depression vanished and her heart throbbed to the lure of
the land of gold. The two small Wattses had scrambled into the
wagon-box.

"Yo' goin' to like hit," announced Watts, noticing the smile. "I
'lowed, fust-off yo'----"

"I'm going to _love_ it!" interrupted the girl vehemently. "My father
loved these hills, and I shall love them. And, as for the cabin! When
Microby and I get through with it, it's going to be the dearest little
place imaginable."

"Hit wus a good sheep camp," admitted Watts, his fingers fumbling
judiciously at his head. "An' they's a heap o' good feed goin' to
waste in this yere valley. But ef the cattlemen wants to pay fer what
they hain't gittin' hit hain't none o' my business, I reckon."

"Why did they drive the sheep out? Surely, there is room for all here
in the hills."

"Vil Holland, he claimed they cain't no sheeps stay in the hill
country. He claims sheeps is like small-poxt. Onct they git a-goin'
they spread, an' like's not, the hull country's ruint fer cattle
range."

"It seems that Vil Holland runs this little corner of Montana."

"He kind o' looks after things fer the cattlemen, but the prospectin's
got into his blood, an' he won't stick to the cattle, only on the
round-up, 'til he gits him a grub-stake. He's a good man--Vil is--ef
it wusn't fer foolin' 'round with the prospectin'."

Instantly, the girl's eyes flashed. "If it wasn't for the
prospecting!" she exclaimed, in sudden anger. "My father was a
prospector--and there was never a better man lived than he! Why is it
that everyone looks askance at