end of the little cañon he stepped downward, halted, and set gun and lamp on a rock shelf. Some twenty feet away, under an overhang of the cliff, an open blanket-roll and various small camp-tools showed[23] beside an Indian fire—short sticks laid like wagon-wheel spokes, with the flame at the hub.

[23]

“Now you can hug me for the last time—maybe,” he solemnly stated. “I’m going to tote you over there. It’s rough going.”

With which she was lifted and carried across a rubble of fragments to the blankets.

As he straightened up in the brilliant light thrown across by the lamp, she saw him plainly for the first time: a lithe, firm-jawed man whose face glowed red with new sunburn between a gray flannel shirt and a head of silky blond hair; a clean-mouthed, clean-limbed chap whose twinkling blue eyes might have brought an approving smile to the lips of many a girl far more critical of men than this maiden of the mountains. But no hint of liking for her new-found friend dawned in her face.

Into her eyes darted a light of mingled recognition, suspicion, repulsion. She shrank from him as if he had suddenly become one of those snakes against which she had just warned him.

“Oh, Lord!” she breathed. “It’s you! The detective!”

[24]

CHAPTER II NIGGER NAT’S GIRL

Blank astonishment crept across the countenance of the blond man. Motionless as the rocks around him he stood, staring down at the hostile face upturned to his.

Blank

“Detective? Me?” he muttered.

“Yes, you!” she flared. “Think you’re smart, don’t you? Mebbe you think us folks are a lot of numbskulls, but we ain’t. And seein’ you jest helped me out of a fix, I’ll tell you somethin’, Mister Spy—you better git out of the Traps right quick, while you’re able to travel!”

The man threw back his head and laughed—a gurgling laugh of pure enjoyment.

“Well, if this isn’t rich!” he chuckled. “Old Cap Hampton, the famous dee-teck-tiff! Say, little redbird, I’m glad you 

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