."

"Only forty-five! Why, Murray, you're young yet. And you know all
about mines."

"And all about Indians too. Come on, Steve; we must look a little
farther before we set out for the camp."

Steve would willingly have stayed to look at all that useless ledge of
gold ore; but his friend was on his feet again, now resolutely turning
his wrinkled face away from it all, and there was nothing to be gained
be mere gazing. A gold-mine cannot be worked by a person's eyes, even
if they are as good and bright a pair as were those of Steve Harrison.

Before them lay the broken level of the table-land, and it was clearer
and clearer, as they walked on, that it was not at all a desert.

It was greater in extent, too, than appeared at first sight, and it was
not long before their march brought them to quite a grove of trees.

"Oak and maple, I declare," said Murray. "I'd hardly have thought of
finding them here. There's good grass too, beyond, and running water."

"Halloo, Murray, what's that? Look! Are they houses?"

"Steve! Steve!"

It was no wonder at all that they both broke into a clean run, and that
they did not halt again until they stood in the edge of a second grove
not far from the margin of the full-banked stream of water which wound
down from the mountains and ran across that plateau.

Trees, groves, grass, in all directions, and a herd of deer were
feeding at no great distance, but it was not at any of these that the
two "pale-faced Lipans" were gazing.

"Houses, Murray!--houses!"

"They were houses once, Steve. Good ones, too. I've heard of such
before. These are not like what I've seen in Mexico."

"They're all in ruins. Some one has started a settlement here and had
to give it up. Maybe they came to work my mine."

It was less than half an hour since he had stumbled over it, and yet
Steve was already thinking of that ledge as "my mine."

It does not take us a great while to acquire a feeling of ownership for
anything we take a great liking to.

"Settlement! Work your mine!" exclaimed Murray. "Why, Steve, the
people that built those houses were all dead and gone before even the
Apaches came here. Nobody knows who they were. Not even the wisest
men in the world."

That was a great relief to Steve, for if they had been forgotten so
completely as that they were sure not to interfere with him and his
mine.

The two friends walked forward again until they stood in the shadow of
the