“Do you mean to tell me that I can have the mule?” exclaimed Oscar, as soon as he could speak. “Yes,” replied the ranchman, still holding Oscar’s hand in his own. “I see very plainly that you can’t go on without him, and so I will lend him to you. When you come back in the spring, you can give him up. If you don’t find me here—and you may not, for life in these parts is so uncertain that a fellow can’t tell to-day where he will be to-morrow—he is yours, to sell or to keep, just as you please.” Oscar now began to realize that the ranchman, in spite of a certain flippancy of manner, was in earnest; and the revulsion of feeling was so great that, for a moment, the dug-out seemed to swim around him. “Mr. Barker,” he stammered, trying to squeeze the huge palm, to the strength of which his own would have offered about as much resistance as a piece of pasteboard, “I don’t know how to thank you for your kindness.” “Then I wouldn’t try,” the ranchman said lightly. “Besides, it is not kindness; it is only justice. You had no means of knowing that the mule was stolen, and it wouldn’t be right for me to take him away from you. If I should claim him now, and thereby put the success of your expedition in jeopardy, I could never look a white man in the face again.” Ike Barker spoke seriously now; and, for the first time since his arrival at the dug-out, Oscar began to see what manner of man it was with whom he was dealing. His backwoods bluntness of manner was entirely foreign to him. He had learned to assume it in order to conceal feelings and sentiments, the exhibition of which would have been regarded by those with whom he was daily thrown in contact as unmanly in the extreme. CHAPTER XXII. THE CAMP IN THE FOOT-HILLS. “I say, perfessor, I reckon ye had an idee, mebbe, that I was kinder goin’ back on ye, when we was down thar to Ike Barker’s, didn’t ye?” The nearest approach to a smile that Big Thompson could command overspread his face, as he removed his pipe from his mouth long enough to address this question to his employer. It was the first time he had in any way referred to the incidents that had happened at the ranchman’s dug-out. The guide was seated on his blanket in front of a cheerful fire; and Oscar stood in front of the open door, watching the storm that was raging. The air was filled with snow-flakes, and the evergreens behind the cabin were bending low before a furious gale. The short winter’s day was drawing to a close, and as the young hunter gazed at the fading landscape before him, and listened to the howling of the wind, he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, shivered almost involuntarily, and thanked his lucky stars that he was comfortably sheltered. Big Thompson’s question aroused him from his revery. He stepped back into the cabin, closed the door behind him, and dropped the heavy bar that secured it in its place.