Dan nodded. Then turning to Jane, he said: "I am sure that Meg would not wish it kept a secret from any of us and so I will tell you what the old Indian said. His speech was almost incoherent, but we understood him to say that Meg's father had died long ago. He must have told the squaw in Slinking Coyote's hearing that he had hidden a box which he wished given to his little girl when she was older, but he must have died before he could tell where he had placed the box." "How I wish it could be found," Jane said earnestly, "for without doubt it would contain identification papers. Although it is a great joy to Meg to know that she is not that old Ute's daughter, she will have to seek out the squaw who took her to the Heger cabin before she can know who her father really was." "And even then I doubt if she would discover much," Dan remarked. "My theory is that Meg's father was a miner who had brought the three-year-old little girl to Crazy Creek Camp and had remained there for a time, even after the exodus. In fact, he must have stayed until the Indian tribe took possession of the otherwise deserted camp. Perhaps just after they came he was seized with a fatal illness and left his little one with the kindly old squaw, probably telling her to give the child to a white family, since that is what she did." "I believe you are right," Jane agreed. "It all sounds very reasonable to me. But why do you suppose Meg's father remained at the camp after everyone else had left? Do you think he had some clue to the whereabouts of the lost vein?" "That we cannot tell," Dan said. "He may have remained to hunt for it." Then, rising, he smiled around at the group. "What shall we do this afternoon, or do you want to just rest?" "Nary for me!" was energetic Bob's reply. "I want to hunt for Meg Heger's hidden box. Who will go with me and where shall we begin the search?" Bob's enthusiasm was contagious. "I believe that I now understand the real reason why the Ute Indian hung around the Crazy Creek Camp," Dan told them. "He knew that the miner had hidden a box, an iron one, of course it must be, and he has been searching for it, probably believing it to contain whatever money Meg's father had." "Of course," Bob agreed. "That's as clear as daylight. We have clues enough, but the thing is to try to reason out _where_ would be a likely place for the miner to have hidden it." Gerald, not wishing to be left out of so interesting a discussion, wisely contributed, "Maybe under the floor-boards in the cabin where he lived, or some place like that." Dan smiled down into the chubby freckled face of his small brother as he replied: "One naturally might suppose so, but I do believe, Gerry, that the old Ute suspected the same thing and has been ransacking those cabins all these years. I would be more inclined to look in some of the dug-outs or tunnels where, if he were a miner, Meg's father may have been searching for the lost vein."