“Where you located?”

“We’re estimating timber up in the Basin,” replied Bob.

The silence that followed was so intense that Bob looked up from the bag he was tying.  He met Martin’s eyes fixed on him.

“The Basin,” repeated Martin slowly, at last.  “Since when?”

“About ten days.”

“We!  Who’s we?”

“Elliott and I,” answered Bob, surprised.  “Why?”

Martin’s gaze shifted.  He plainly hesitated for a next remark.

“How’d you like it there?” he asked lamely, at length.  “I thought none of you fellows ever went there.”

“Fine timber,” answered Bob, cheerfully.  “We don’t usually.  Somebody does though.  California John told me that trail was old and out of use; but it’s been used a lot.  Who gets up there?”

“The boys drive in some cattle occasionally,” replied Martin, with an effort.

Bob stared in surprise.  He knew this was not so, and started to speak, but thought better of it.  After he had left the store, he looked back.  Martin was gazing after him, a frown between his brows.

Before he left town a half-dozen of the mountain men had asked him, with an obvious attempt to make the question casual, how he liked the Basin, how long he thought his work would keep him there.  Each, as he turned away, followed him with that long, speculative, brooding look.  Always, heretofore, his relations with these mountain people had been easy, sympathetic and cordial.  Now all at once, without reason, they held him at arm’s length and regarded him with suspicious if not hostile eyes.

Puzzling over this he rode back up the road past the Power House.  Thence issued Oldham to hail him.  He pulled up.

“I hear you’re estimating the timber in the Basin,” said the gray man, with more appearance of disturbance than Bob had ever seen him display.

Bob acknowledged the accuracy of his statement.

“Indeed!” said Oldham, pulling at his clipped moustache, and after a little, “Indeed!” he repeated.

So the news had run ahead of him.  Bob began to think the news important, but for some reason at which he could not as yet guess.  This conviction was strengthened by the fact that from the two mountain cabins he passed on his way to the beginning of the trail, men lounged out to talk with him, and in each case the question, craftily rendered casual, was put to him as to his business in the Basin.  Before one of these cabins stood a sweating horse.

“Look here,” he demanded of the Carrolls, “why all this interest about our being in the Basin?  Every man-jack asks me.  What’s the point?”

Old man Carroll stroked his long beard.

“Do they so?” he drawled comfortably.  “Well, I reckon little things make news, as they say, when you’re in a wild country.  They ain’t been no work done in the Basin for so long that we’re all just nat’rally interested; that’s all.”