in the crowd to start a fire to cook the game
and keep us from freezing stiff. He knows."

"That's right," declared the fat scout, instantly, and with a fond
look toward Giraffe, as memories of the occasion referred to came
trooping into his mind, so that he could almost smell the odor of
those cooking birds, thrust near the delightful fire on the points of
long splinters of wood.

Meanwhile the guide had come back to where the little party began to
make preparations for the night, the packs having been taken from the
backs of Mike and Molly, and everybody finding something to do in the
bustle.

"Get anything?" asked Thad, as Toby Smathers came up, a grin
decorating his sunburnt but honest face.

"Oh! it was the kunnel, all right," replied the guide. "I knows the
mark o' his hoof among a thousand. An' he's got them two pizen sharks
along o' him, Waffles and Dickey Bird. They been kicked out of nigh
every camp in the silver region, but they just about suit the ijee of
the kunnel, when he wants any dirty work done."

"And that's what you call finding the long lost silver mine, do you?"
asked the scoutmaster, smiling.

"Well, accordin' to the ijee of most decent miners, that same Rawson
had the first claim on that ere mine; and any feller that rediscovers
it ought to turn a third of the proceeds over to the fambly of the man
as got thar first. But you don't ketch Kunnel Kracker doin' any such
foolish business as that. He'd gobble the whole business, and snap his
finger at the widow and orphans. But they's one thing I don't just
exactly understand about the marks hereabouts. Seems to be a boy along
with the gang. Now, whatever could such an old seasoned prospector and
miner as Kracker want with a half grown boy up in this part of the
country, when he's huntin' for a mine that seems to have dropped out
of sight, like it fell through to China? That's what gets _me_."

"Perhaps it might be an Indian boy; we had a glimpse of such a half
grown brave skulking along, one day. He seemed to want to count noses
in our crowd the worst kind, and we wondered if he meant to steal
anything; but after a while he just cut stick and cleared out, looking
a lot disappointed over something. Giraffe here tried to get close
enough to him to speak, but he was that shy he kept moving off all the
time. We thought he might have expected to see somebody he knew among
us, a boy perhaps, and when he found that we were a pack of strangers
he di