So a full week sped by.  Then for the first time came both opportunity and excuse for Howard to leave the ranch.  Chuck Evans had ridden into San Ramon to see if there were a market for a string of mules; he brought back word that a teamster named Roberts in the new mining-camp had been making inquiries.  It seemed that he wanted high-grade stock and had the money to pay for it.  Everything was running smoothly on the ranch, and Howard rode this time on his own errand.  But, before starting for Sanchia’s Town, he slipped into the ranchhouse and shaved and changed to a new shirt and chaps and recently blackened boots.  Thereafter he brushed his best black hat.  Then from a bottom drawer of his old bureau, where it was hidden under a pile of clothing, he brought out a parcel which had come with him from a store in San Juan.

As good a way as any to see Roberts in Sanchia’s Town led by way of the Longstreet camp on Last Ridge.  Howard took the winding trail up which his horse could climb to the plateau, and once on the level land came swooping down on the well-remembered spot joyously.  The spot itself was hidden from him by the grove of stunted pines until he came within a couple of hundred yards of it.  Then he jerked his horse down to a standstill and sat staring before him incredulously.  The cabin was gone quite as though there had never been a cabin there in all time.

At first he wouldn’t believe his eyes.  Then swiftly his wonderment altered to consternation.  They had gone!  Helen and her father had gone.  Carr had prevailed upon them; Howard had not come to see; by now they were flying eastward upon the speeding overland train, or perhaps were already in New York.

The splendour of the day died; the joyousness went out of his heart; he sat staring at the emptiness before him, then at the parcel in brown paper clutched so foolishly in his hand.  He looked all about him; through the trees as though he expected to see Helen’s laughing face watching him; across the broken ridges beyond the flat; down into his own valley.  Down there, too, the glory had passed.  When he had stood here with Helen and they two had looked across the valley lands together, it had been to him like the promised land.  Now it was so much dirt and rock and grass with cows and horses browsing stupidly across all of it.

For a long time he sat very still.  Then his face hardened.

‘If she has gone, then I am going, too,’ he told himself.  ’And I am going to bring her back.’

He turned his horse and rode swiftly to Sanchia’s Town.  They would have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad.  In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp.  In his present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new settlement.  Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have been amazed at what he saw about him.  He had known men before now to make towns upon dry bare ground and in a mere