ke simplicity that she MAY have
been too foolishly polite to her father's guest for the sake of her
father's hotel.

However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a new
discovery and working of the "old gold ledge" at Buena Vista! As the
three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was accepted in
the neighborhood as the result of careful examination and prospecting on
the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner Larry Hawkins. And when
the latter gentleman afterwards boldly proposed to Polly Swinger, she
mischievously declared that she accepted him only that the secret might
not go "out of the family."

LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY

It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the eastern
slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between the sea and the
inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century of zigzagging mules
were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by winter rains and dried
by summer suns during that period; the occasional ruts of heavy,
rude, wooden wheels--long obsolete--were still preserved and visible.
Weather-worn boulders and ledges, lying in the unclouded glare of an
August sky, radiated a quivering heat that was intolerable, even while
above them the masts of gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold
southwestern trades from the unseen ocean beyond. A red, burning dust
lay everywhere, as if the heat were slowly and visibly precipitating
itself.

The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and the
cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the profound
woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered emigrant wagon
slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was travel-stained and
worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to have reached the last
stage of its journey and fitness. The only occupants, a man and a girl,
appeared to be equally jaded and exhausted, with the added querulousness
of discontent in their sallow and badly nourished faces. Their voices,
too, were not unlike the creaking they had been pitched to overcome, and
there was an absence of reserve and consciousness in their speech, which
told pathetically of an equal absence of society.

"It's no user talkin'! I tell ye, ye hain't got no more sense than a
coyote! I'm sick and tired of it, doggoned if I ain't! Ye ain't no more
use nor a hossfly,--and jest ez hinderin'! It was along o' you that we
lost the stock at Laramie, and ef