“He ain’t dead,” muttered Tom, determinedly, while Buck Ashley also shook his head in repudiation of the cowboy’s theory. “Well, I happen to know,” observed Dick Willoughby, “that Mr. Thurston has run down the story of the White Wolf’s death in that Seattle saloon brawl pretty thoroughly, and he is of the opinion that the big-featured articles in the San Francisco and Los Angeles papers were correct—that the dead man’s identity was absolutely established.” “That’s how he’d wish it to be, at all events,” said Buck Ashley. “But even now, when Ben Thurston ventures to come home to the rancho, he brings with him a great big hulking bodyguard—Leach Sharkey, I’m told is the fellow’s name. That don’t look much like believin’ the White Wolf to be dead and the vendetta played out, does it? You can see it in his hang-dog face that it isn’t any real pleasure for him to be around in these parts. He ain’t once paid me a visit at the store. Guess he thinks his hide’ll last longer by stickin’ close to home. You owe your job o’ runnin’ his cattle, Dick Willoughby, to the fact that he’s still plumb scared.” “Oh, well, I am in his employ,” said Dick loyally, “and I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as regards these ugly rumors and idle stories. He has always been on the square with me. But perhaps he’ll stick to the rancho, now he believes the White Wolf to be dead.” “He may believe it, but, as Buck says, why then the bodyguard?” commented the sheriff as he relighted his pipe. “Yes.” replied Dick Willoughby, “but I believe he is thinking of letting Leach Sharkey go. Personally I would be willing to wager that Don Manuel, whom no one has seen since that last raid on the stage coach, is dead and sleeping with his sires.” “Well, dead or alive,” exclaimed Jack Rover, “I don’t care a hang for the White Wolf and his-buried treasure. But what I would like to know is the exact location of that rippling mountain stream, the identical sandbar where the old squaw Guadalupe gathers up her pocket change with which to buy groceries. That would be a heap better than any blooming cave. Them’s my sentiments.” As he said this he threw some silver on the bar and invited everybody to lubricate. “Just nominate your poison, boys, and let’s drink to my finding old Guadalupe’s gold mine.” They all laughed good-naturedly, and Lieutenant Munson declared that he thought he would put in the balance of his furlough days prospecting. “You know,” he explained in an aside to the storekeeper while the latter was preparing the drinks, “I am only here to visit my old college pal, Dick Willoughby, and incidentally see the place where my father was a soldier in the early California days. He was stationed several years in Fort Tejon.” “That was before my time,” said Buck Ashley. “The soldiers had abandoned the old fort when I came first into these parts.” Meanwhile Dick Willoughby was clinking glasses with Jack Hover.