if that's their notion, they're due to camp out somewhere, right soon. It's all o' forty mile to the neardest of the Roaring Fork towns."

The engine tank was filled, and the fireman was flinging the dripping spout to its perpendicular. Ballard took his seat again, and became once more immersed in his topographical studies of the new field; which was possibly why the somewhat singular spectacle of a party of tourists hastening on to meet night and the untaverned wilderness passed from his mind.

The approach to the headquarters camp of the Arcadia Company skirted the right bank of the Boiling Water, in this portion of its course a river of the plain, eddying swiftly between the aspen-fringed banks. But a few miles farther on, where the gentle undulations of the rich grass-land gave place to bare, rock-capped hills, the stream broke at intervals into noisy rapids, with deep pools to mark the steps of its descent.

Ballard's seat on the fireman's box was on the wrong side for the topographical purpose, and he crossed the cab to stand at Hoskins's elbow. As they were passing one of the stillest of the pools, the engineman said, with a sidewise jerk of his thumb:

"That's the place where Mr. Braithwaite was drowned. Came down here from camp to catch a mess o' trout for his supper and fell in—from the far bank."

"Couldn't he swim?" Ballard asked.

"They all say he could. Anyhow, it looks as if he might 'a' got out o' that little mill-pond easy enough. But he didn't. They found his fishing tackle on the bank, and him down at the foot of the second rapid below—both arms broke and the top of his head caved in, like he'd been run through a rock crusher. They can say what they please; I ain't believin' the river done it."

"What do you believe?" Ballard was looking across to a collection of low buildings and corrals—evidently the headquarters of the old cattle king's ranch outfit—nestling in a sheltered cove beyond the stream, and his question was a half-conscious thought slipping into speech.

"I believe this whole blame' job is a hoodoo," was the prompt rejoinder. And then, with the freedom born of long service in the unfettered areas where discipline means obedience but not servility, the man added: "I wouldn't be standin' in your shoes this minute for all the money the Arcadia Company could pay me, Mr. Ballard."

Ballard was young, fit, 

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