"I _am_ in bad shape," Jeff admitted. "If I'd known I was going to lose the use o' myself like this, I wouldn't ha' been so doggoned keen about my friend leavin' me." "Your friend must be in a partic'lar hurry." "He was that," Jeff murmured. A queer buzzing in his ears and an overpowering feeling of giddiness made him close his eyes. When he opened them, the boy had disappeared. Jeff saw that his horse had been tied up in the shade of a scrub-oak. "That boy seems to have some sense," he reflected. "This is a knock- out, sure." Again he closed his eyes. A blue jay began to chatter; and when he had finished his screed, a cock-quail challenged the silence. Very soon the wilderness was uttering all its familiar sounds. Jeff, lying flat on his back, could hear the rabbits scurrying through the chaparral. After an interminable delay his ears caught the crackle of dry twigs snapped beneath a human foot. "Feelin' lonesome?" "I'm mighty glad to see you again," Jeff admitted. "Ah, water! That's a sight better'n whisky." He drank thirstily, for the sun was high in the heavens, and the road as hot as an oven. "I reckoned you'd come back," Jeff continued. "Why?" "To earn that dollar." He eyed the lad's somewhat ragged overalls. "Say--what do they call ye to home?" "Bud." "Bud, eh? Short for brother. Folks got a fam'ly." He reflected that Bud's sister, if he had one, might be nice-looking. "Well, Bud, I'm under obligations to ye, for hitchin' up the plug in the shade. 'Twas thoughtful. Where ha' ye been?" "I've been hunting Dad. But he's off in the hills. If I could get ye to our camp----" "The plug'll have to do it. Unhitch him." Bud untied the animal, who limped even more acutely than his master. Perhaps he lacked his master's grit. Jeff was the colour of parchment when he found himself in the saddle, whereon he sat huddled up, gripping the horn. "Freeze on," said the boy. "You bet," Jeff replied laconically. Bud led the horse a few yards down the road, passing from it into the chaparral. Thence, through a tangled wilderness of scrub-oak and manzanita, down a steep slope, into a pretty cañon. "Here we are." A sudden turn of the trail revealed a squatter's hut built of rough lumber, and standing beneath a live-oak. A small creek was babbling its way to the Salinas River. The clearing in front of the hut was strewn with empty tins. A tumble-down shed encircled by a corral was on the other side of the creek. Jeff knew at once that he was looking at one of the innumerable mountain-claims taken up by Eastern settlers in the days of the great land boom, and forsaken by them a couple of years afterwards. Jeff slid from the saddle on to his sound leg; then, counting rapidly the shining tins, he said reflectively:-- "Bin here about a month, I reckon." "Yes--Mister--Sherlock--Holmes." Jeff stared. The ragamuffins of the foothills are not in the habit of reading fiction, although lying comes easy to them. "Kin you read?" said Jeff.