In the valley the going was better, and with quirt and spur she urged her horse to his best, her eyes on the lone pine tree. At the rock wall beyond, she pulled up sharply and stared at the jagged crevice that bisected it from top to bottom. It was the crevice of the photograph! Very deliberately she began at the top and traced its course to the bottom. She noted the scraggly, stunted pines that fringed the rim of the wall and that the crack started straight, and then zigzagged to the ground. Producing the "close up" photograph, she compared it with the reality before her--an entirely superfluous and needless act, for each minute detail of the spot at which she stared was indelibly engraved upon her memory. For hours on end, she had studied those photographs, and now--she laughed aloud, and the sound roused her to action. Slipping from the horse, she fumbled at the pack strings of the saddle and loosened the canvas bag. She reached into it, and stood erect holding a light hand-axe. Once more she consulted her map. "Stake l. c.," she read. "That's lode claim--and then that funny wiggly mark, and then the word center." Her brows drew together as she studied the ground. Suddenly her face brightened. "Why, of course!" she exclaimed. "That mark represents the crack, and daddy meant to stake the claim with the crack for the center. Well, here goes!" She vehemently attacked a young sapling, and ten minutes later viewed with pride her four roughly hacked stakes. Picking up one of them and the axe, she paced off her distance, and as she reached the first corner point, stared in surprise at the ground. The claim had already been staked! Eagerly she stooped to examine the bit of wood. It had evidently been in place for some time--how long, the girl could not tell. Long enough, though, for its surface to have become weather-grayed and discolored. "Daddy's stakes," she breathed softly, and as her fingers strayed over the surface two big tears welled into her eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks. "If he staked the claim, I wonder why he didn't file," she puzzled over the matter for a moment, and dismissed it. "I don't know why. But, anyway, the thing for me to do is to get in my own stakes--only, I'll file, just as soon as I can get to the register's office."