u keep her thinking you're the Sun-god--that's
your job."

It rained all that day, and when night settled down it grew unreasonably
warm for that altitude, and down on the marshes the horses stood,
patiently enduring the gnats and mosquitoes. They plagued Pogosa so
cruelly that Wetherell took his own web of bobinet and made a protecting
cage for her head and hands. Never before had she been shielded from the
pests of outdoor life. She laughed as she heard the baffled buzzing
outside her net, and, pointing her finger, addressed them mockingly.
Wetherell took the same joy in this that a child takes in the action of
a kitten dressed as a doll. To Eugene he said:

"You tell her Injun plenty fool. He don't know enough to get gold and
buy mosquito netting. If she is wise and shows me the mine she will
never be bitten again. No flies. No mosquitoes. Plenty beef. Plenty
butter and hot biscuits. Plenty sugar and coffee. White man's own horse
carry her back to her people."

It took some time to make the old woman understand this, and then she
replied briefly, but with vigor, and Eugene translated it thus: "White
man all same big chief. Go find mine, _sure_, for you. No want other
white man to have gold. All yours."

The morning broke tardily. The rain had ceased, but the gray mist still
hid the peaks, and now and then the pines shook down a shower of drops
upon the tent cloth as if impatient of the persistent gathering of
moisture. Otherwise the forest was as still as if it were cut from
bronze.

Kelley arose and, going outside, began kicking the embers together.
"Wake up, Andy. It's a gray outlook we have," he announced, after a
careful survey. "The worst sign is this warmth and stillness. We're in
the heart of the storm, and the mosquitoes are hellish."

As Wetherell was creeping from the tent door one of the pines quivered
and sent down a handful of drops, squarely soaking the back of his neck,
and a huge mosquito stuck savagely to the end of his nose. He was not in
the best of humor as he straightened up.

"I can stand cold and snow, or wet and cold, but this hot, sticky, dark
weather irritates me. Let's climb high and see if we can't reach the
frost-line."

"We'll be frosty enough when this storm passes," Kelley said,
comfortingly. Then in a note of astonishment and surprise, "Well, look
at that!"

Wetherell looked where he pointed, and beheld Pogosa squatting before a
meager fire at her tent door, her head caref