"Look at the buzzards sitting on that ridge of a two-story building, will you?" exclaimed Lanky, pointing as he spoke. "There! They're off, flying," said Paul, "each starting with a queer little jump that sends the big bird up several feet before its wings begin to carry it. Always liked to watch turkey-buzzards roosting on a dead tree or dropping down to feed. Make me think of the clowns at a circus, they're so comical." "I'd call this Camp Desolation, if you asked me," observed Frank, in an aside to his chums. "Never did set eyes on its equal in all my life," Lanky admitted. "I reckon nobody's been around here for years, to look at the way those shacks and stores and huts have decayed." "That's where you're away off your trolley then," chuckled Frank. "Seen something, or you wouldn't talk that way," ventured the other, a bit annoyed because Frank had again beaten him at woodcraft, in which Lanky fancied himself a master. "Lots of times, when we were climbing the canyon bed to top the rise," Frank told him, with a nod; "especially during the last half hour. Signs of horses coming and going--lately, too--little stones displaced, even the plain print of hoofs when there chanced to be a layer of earth to make them show. I'm a whole lot surprised that _you_ missed them, Lanky." "Huh! even the best scouts trip up once in a long time," grunted Lanky. "I must have been watching Jerry so closely and squinting up at the rock walls above, thinkin' about what a nice place it'd be for an old grizzly to make a den." "There, you can see the tracks as plain as print right now," Frank at that juncture told his chums, pointing toward the ground just ahead. Apparently fifty years back many animals and treasure-hunting prospectors must have made a well-beaten trail, coming up by way of the canyon and arriving at the open place marking the plateau. "Easy enough," acknowledged Lanky, one of whose best qualities was frankness when owning up to being surprised in anything. "But there! Jerry's started to lead the way into the ghostly camp. Let's go!" No one joked or laughed as thus solemnly they walked their winded ponies among those amazing wrecks of old-time life and bustle; it was too much like passing through a cemetery long since abandoned and fallen upon evil times. "Most of them seem to have been roughly built shacks, made out of pinon trees cut on the side of the mountain, though I can see some cedar among them--yes, and oak, besides. It's the story of the 'Deserted Village' all over again, only no pestilence brought about this desolation." "The whole bunch was wild to pick up gold nuggets," said Lanky. "Anyway, that's what Jerry told us; and when the bubble burst they cleared out bag and baggage." "What do you suppose that largest building was for?" asked Paul.