"I was right in my theory about the old river bed," he said to her, as she poured his coffee. "Harris backs me up in it, and it was ore he found, and not the loose dirt in the soil. So the thing I am going to strike out for is the headquarters where that loose dust comes from." "Oh! then it was ore you found?" she asked. Harris nodded his head. "Ore on the surface--and near here." That news made her even more anxious about that stranger who had prowled around. Perhaps he, too, was searching for the hidden wealth. When the supper was over, and the sun had slipped back of the mountain, she beckoned to the squaw, and with the water bucket as a visible errand, they started toward the spring. But they did not stop there. She wanted to see with her own eyes those footprints, and she followed the Indian down into the woods already growing dusky in the dying day. The birds were singing their good-night songs, and all the land seemed steeped in repose. Only those two figures, gliding between the trees, carried with them the spirit of unrest. They reached an open space where no trees grew very close--a bit of marsh land, where the soil was black and tall ferns grew. The squaw led her straight to a place where two of the fern fronds were bent and broken. She parted the green lances, and there beside it was a scraping away of the earth, as though some one walking there had slipped, and in the black sandy loam a shoe had sunk deep. The Indian was right; it was the mark of a white man, for the reds of that country had not yet adopted the footgear of their more advanced neighbors. "It turn to camp," said the squaw. "Maybe some white thief, so I tell you. Me tell Dan?" "Wait," answered the girl; and, kneeling down, she studied the slender outline of the foot attentively. "Any more tracks?" "No more--only leaves stirred nearer to camp; he go that way." The full moon rose clear and warm in the east, while yet the sun's light lingered over the wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and 'Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, and her face looked troubled. They walked on, looking to right and left in any nook where deep shadows lay, but never a sign could they see of aught that was human besides themselves, until they neared the springs again, when the squaw laid her hand on the arm of the girl. "Dan," she said, in her low, abrupt way. The girl, looking up, saw him a little way ahead of them, standing there straight, strong, and surely to be trusted; yet her first impulse was to tell him nothing. "Take the water and go," she said to the Indian, and the woman disappeared like a mere wraith of a woman in the pale shadows.