the object of it--and then would have passed on to a less competent
citizen.

The trail grew stiffer. It circled into a draw down which tumbled a
jocund little stream. Trout, it might be safely guessed, lurked here
in the riffles and behind the big stones. An ideal camping-ground
this, but the rider rejected it apparently without consideration. He
passed into the cañon beyond, and so by a long uphill climb came to the
higher reaches of the hills.

He rode patiently, without any hurry, without any hesitation. Here
again a reader of character might have found something significant in
the steadiness of the man. Once on the trail, it would not be easy to
shake him off.

By the count of years Dingwell might be in the early forties. Many
little wrinkles radiated fanlike from the corners of his eyes. But
whatever his age time had not tamed him. In the cock of those same
steel-blue eyes was something jaunty, something almost debonair, that
carried one back to a youth of care-free rioting in a land of sunshine.
Not that Mr. Dingwell was given to futile dissipations. He had the
reputation of a responsible ranchman. But it is not to be denied that
little devils of mischief at times danced in those orbs.

Into the hills the trail wound across gulches and along the shoulders
of elephant humps. It brought him into a country of stunted pines and
red sandstone, and so to the summit of a ridge which formed part of the
rim of a saucer-shaped basin. He looked down into an open park hedged
in on the far side by mountains. Scrubby pines straggled up the slopes
from arroyos that cleft the hills. By divers unknown paths these led