The hounds leaped after them, clearing the ground with long, easy bounds. The girl watched them glide along, yelping, barking, filling the air with their voices. Her horse loped neck to neck with the soft-voiced twin's. She pointed at the dogs, drawing the boy's attention to them. "Why did you bring them?" she asked. "They'll warn your old ones and they'll be far away by the time we get there. You're usually so quick-witted, Dan, I wonder you did not think of it!" The boy made no reply, but gave her a look filled with cunning, cool intent. So this was his revenge--his twin was to dig into a rocky ledge for an empty coyote's den! She marveled at the boy's deliberate scheming, and rode gayly along to see the outcome. To this sort of revenge she had no actual objection. They rode up over the top of a high divide, then followed down a narrow draw until it widened into a tiny basin, and there, in the center of vivid green, like a smooth, well-kept lawn, nestled old Peter's cabin. Surrounding this pretty basin were steep, high ridges and hills, smooth-carpeted, too, except the ever narrow terraced "buffalo trails," and here and there a broken line where sharp crags of sandstone jutted out. To the base of one of these ridges of rock, back of the old hermit's one-roomed log shack, the soft-voiced twin led the way, followed closely by his eager brother. The twins left their horses at the foot of the hill and climbed up about thirty feet to a narrow ledge, where a shovel and pickax marked the small entrance of a coyote's den. Dave set immediately at work plying the pickax with vigor, and shoveling out the stones and the hardened sand about the opening, while his twin superintended the job and occasionally offered words of encouragement. Hope watched them from below. Evidently the soft-voiced boy was enjoying himself immensely. He sat on one end of the ledge, his blue-overalled legs dangling over the side, while Dave worked industriously, hopefully on. The hounds evidently had found a trail of some kind, for after sniffing about busily for a moment they made a straight line along the hill, disappearing over the high ridge. Hope watched them out of sight, feeling an impulse to follow, but changed her mind and rode over to old Peter's cabin instead. The old man limped to the door and peered out cautiously. He was a squat-figured, broad-shouldered, grizzled little man, with unkempt beard and a shaggy sheaf of iron-gray hair, beneath which peered bright, shifting blue eyes. He added to his natural stoop-shouldered posture by a rude crutch of hasty manufacture much too short for him, which he leaned heavily upon. He opened the door only wide enough to put out his head, which he did cautiously, holding his hand upon the wooden latch. "How d'!" he said in a deep, gruff voice that seemed to come from somewhere between his shoulders. She nodded brightly, remembering to have seen the old fellow around Harris'.