depending on the
soldiers for help, for they had declined to assist him, and,
furthermore, had shot at him when he attempted to leave the fort.

"Well, I say!" exclaimed the frontiersman, giving Elam a good looking
over, "you are a brave lad, and I know you will come out all right."

Elam carried the news to the wagon that there were no Indians between
them and the fort, and afterward continued on his lonely way to the
sheep-herder's ranch. He came within sight of it about eleven o'clock
that night, and, dismounting from his horse and leaving him on the open
prairie, he proceeded to stalk it as he would an antelope, being careful
that not a glimpse of him should be seen. It was a bright moonlight
night, and for that reason he was doubly careful. There was something
more than the saddle and bridle he wanted, and that was his blankets.
There was some of the lunch left in there. He had eaten but one meal
that day, and he had nearly a hundred miles to go before he could get
any more.

Elam was nearly an hour in coming up to that ranch, and he was sure that
anyone who might be on the lookout would have been deceived for once in
his life. He crawled all around the hay-racks without seeing anybody,
and finally went in at the open door without seeing or hearing anybody.
He found all the articles of which he was in search--the saddle tucked
away in one corner of a bunk to serve as a pillow, the blankets spread
over them, and the bridle and lunch placed on a box near the head of the
bed, and, quickly shouldering them, he made his way out of the cabin in
the direction in which he had left his horse.

"Now," said Elam, as he strapped the saddle on the animal's back and
slipped the bridle into his mouth, "the next thing is something else,
and it's going to be far more dangerous than this. I am going to have
those furs. I need them more than they do. I have got the map of the
hiding-place of that nugget at my shanty, and some of them are going to
get hurt if I don't get it."

Elam kept out a portion of his lunch (the rest was strapped up in the
blankets, which were stowed away behind the saddle), eating it as he
galloped along, and this time he directed his course toward the willows
that lined the base of the foot-hills. At daylight he discovered
something--the track of an unshod pony. He looked all around, but there
was no one in sight. He dismounted and saw that the horse had been going
at full jump, and as there was dew on t