Ashton stared with a puzzled, half-dazed expression from the tentless trees beside him to the fore and hind quarters of veal wrapped in slicker raincoats and fastened on back of the men's saddles. "Well?" demanded Knowles. "Thought you said you were camped here." "I am--that is, I--My tent was right there between those two trees," said Ashton. "You see, there are the twigs and leaves I had my valet collect for my bed." "Shore--valleys are great on collecting beds of leaves and sand and bowlders," observed Gowan. "There's his fireplace," said the girl, wheeling her horse through a clump of wild rosebushes. "Yes, and he's right about the tent, too. It is a bed. Here's a dozen cigarette boxes and--What's this, Mr. Ashton! Looks as if someone had left a note for you." "A note?" he muttered, slipping to the ground. He ran over to the spot to which she was pointing. On a little pile of stones, in front of where his tent had been pitched, a piece of coarse wrapping paper covered with writing was fluttering in the light breeze. He snatched it up and read the note with fast-growing bewilderment. "What is it?" sympathetically questioned the girl, quick to see that he was in real trouble. He did not answer. He did not even realize that she had spoken. With feverish haste he caught up an opened envelope that had lain under the paper. Drawn by his odd manner, Knowles and Gowan came over to stare at him. He had torn a letter from the envelope. It was in typewriting and covered less than a page, yet he gaped at it, reading and re-reading the lines as if too dazed to be able to comprehend their meaning. Slowly the involved sentences burned their way into his consciousness. As his bewilderment cleared, his concern deepened to dismay, and from dismay to consternation. His jaw dropped slack, his face whitened, the pupils of his eyes dilated. "What is it? What's the matter?" exclaimed the girl. "Matter?"--His voice was hoarse and strained. He crumpled the letter in a convulsive grasp--"Matter? I'm ruined!--ruined! God!" Knowles and the girl were both silent before the despair in the young man's face. Gowan was more obtuse or else less considerate. "Shore, you're plumb busted, partner," he ironically condoled. "Your whole outfit has flown away on the wings of the morning. Hope you won't tell us the pay for your veal has vamoosed with the rest." "Oh, Kid, for shame!" reproved the girl. "Of course Daddy won't ask for any pay--now." Ashton burst into a jangling high-pitched laugh. "No, no! there's still my pony and saddle and rifle and watch!" he cried, half hysterically. "Take them! strip me! Here's my hat, too! I paid forty-five dollars for it--silver band." He flung it on the ground. "There's a hole in it--I wish the hole were through my head!"