A MISSING SENTINEL.---FREMONT'S CAMP.





"Quien Vive!" A sentinel's challenge rings out. The sounds are
borne away on the night wind sweeping Gavilan Peak. No response.
March breezes drive the salty fog from Monterey Bay into the eyes
of the soldier shivering in the silent hours before dawn.

"Only a coyote or a mountain wolf," mutters Maxime Valois.
He resumes his tramp along the rocky ramparts of the Californian
Coast Range. His eyes are strained to pierce the night. He waits,
his finger on the trigger of his Kentucky rifle.

Surely something was creeping toward him from the chaparral. No:
another illusion. Pride keeps him from calling for help. Three-score
dauntless "pathfinders" are sleeping here around intrepid Fremont.

It is early March in 1846. Over in the valley the herd-guard watch
the animals. "No, not an Indian," mutters the sentinel. "They would
stampede the horses at once. No Mexican would brave death here,"
muses Valois.

Only a boy of twenty, he is a veteran already. He feels for his
revolver and knife. He knows he can defy any sneaking Californian.

"It must be some beast," he concludes, as he stumbles along the
wind-swept path. Maxime Valois dreams of his far-away home on the