ing the horror in Iola's face. "But you may be sure that two
cowards like them will never get the best of our brothers, unless they
do it in some sneaking underhanded way; and the boys have been warned to
look out for them. It won't take Thure and Bud as long to discover who
they are, as it did us. The instant they see that broken nose and
pock-marked face, they will be on their guard. But I do wish we had said
nothing about the boys starting for the mines. Anyhow that is about all
the information they did get from us that will do them any good, thank
goodness! And they will have a mighty hard time finding and following
their trail, unless they are old hunters and trappers; and they did not
look as if they were. Anyhow it can't be helped now; and the best thing
that we can do is to get back home as quickly as we can."

"I don't think we had better say anything to our mothers about meeting
the two men," Iola said, as with a final look in the direction of the
two horsemen, who were still galloping up the valley, they turned their
horses homeward. "It wouldn't do any good to tell them and they'd worry
a lot."

"You're right. Mum's the word," agreed Ruth; and then both girls struck
their horses sharply and started on a swift gallop for the Conroyal
rancho, where we must leave them for the present and return to Thure and
Bud.

CHAPTER VI

THE SIGN OF THE TWO RED THUMBS

At the date of the happenings here recorded, 1849, the greater part of
California was still an unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by scattered
tribes of Indians and the wild beasts. For some three hundred years the
Spaniards and the Mexicans had occupied a few choice spots along the
coast, with now and then an isolated ranchero in the great interior
valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers. Then, in 1846, had
come the War with Mexico and the Conquest of California by the
Americans, swiftly followed by the discovery of gold in 1848 and the
great inflow of gold-seekers from all parts of the world of 1849 and
later, who, of course, all rushed pell-mell to the gold regions, leaving
the rest of California more thinly populated than ever. Indeed, in 1849,
all California, except the gold regions, was practically deserted; and,
since the gold regions were located in what had been, a few weeks
before, a mountainous wilderness, nearly everybody in California was
living in the wilderness, and, necessarily, living under primitive
wilderness con