the
Sierra, and the little nut pine that our California Indians harvest is
away down in the foothills among the white oaks and manzanitas, so I'm
afraid whatever else we come across on this trip, we won't want to count
on pine nuts."

"What interests _me_ more," said Ted, "is whether we are going to come
across any gold or not."

"Now you're talking!" the old prospector suddenly spoke up.

Ted's eyes shone.

Ace had an experience about this time that flavored his nightmares for
some time to come. Following a lumber chute, one of these three board
affairs, up the side of a particularly steep slope one day, where at the
time of the spring floods the yellow pine logs had been sent down to the
river, he thought to try a little target shooting with Long Lester's
rifle. But at the first shot a bunch of range cattle,--of whose presence
he had not known,--began crowding curiously near. He fired again, and a
cow with a calf took alarm and started to charge him, but was driven back
with a few clods and a flourished stick.

He fired again. This time, quite by accident, his bullet hit an old bull
squarely on the horn. The shock at first stunned the animal, and he fell
forward on his knees. Recovering in an instant, however, the enraged
animal made for Ace.

[Illustration: Leaping aboard a log he sent it shooting to the stream
below.]

The Senator's son had that day worn his heavy leather chaps. He had found
them burdensome enough on his slow climb upward. They now impeded him
till he could not have outrun the animal had he tried, nor was there any
tree handy between him and it.

Then a wild thought struck him. The log slide!--It was mighty risky, but
then, so was the bull. Leaping aboard a log that still lay at the head of
the slide, he pulled the lever and sent it shooting to the stream below,
and the fallen pine needles flew out in a cloud before him, as the log
hurled down the grade. His heavy leather chaps really helped him balance
now, and his hob-nails helped him cling.

The log came to a stand-still before it reached the river,--but Ace did
not. And the bull was hopelessly out-distanced.

CHAPTER III

LIVING OFF THE WILDERNESS

On every side stretched a sea of peaks. They might have been in
mid-ocean, stranded on a desert island, had they not been on a
mountain-top instead.

For one glorious fortnight they had camped beside white cascading rivers,
and along the singing streams that fed them, follow