One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, with
camp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into this
hollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand.
The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place.

"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man beside
him. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on the
back seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and a
veiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision of
their fellow travelers.

"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it," the teamster urged on the
point in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would have
made a clean-up of them."

"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim
Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front,
who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face
and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,--eyes that saw
everything and told nothing.

"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney about
it," he said.

Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with the
road, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country;
but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowance
the testimony of any one man of merely local information.

"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself,