After considerable difficulty, she succeeded in planting her own stake close beside the other, which marked the southwest corner of the claim, a short time later the northwest corner was staked, and the girl stared again at the rock wall. "Why, I've got to put in my eastern boundary stakes up on top--three hundred feet back from the edge!" she exclaimed; "maybe I'll find his notice on one of those stakes." It required only a moment to locate a ravine that led to the top of the ledge which was not nearly so high as the one that formed the opposite side of the valley. She found the old stakes, but no sign of a notice. "The wind, and the snow, and the rain have destroyed it long ago," she muttered. "And, now for my own notice." Producing from her bag a pencil and a piece of paper, she wrote her description and affixed it to a stake by means of a bit of wire. Then, descending once more into the valley, she produced her luncheon and threw herself down beside the little creek. It was mid-afternoon, and she suddenly discovered that she was ravenously hungry. With her back against a rock fragment, she sat and feasted her eyes upon her claim--hers--HERS! Her thoughts flew backward to the enthusiasm of her father over this very claim. She remembered how his eyes had lighted as he told her of its hidden treasure. She remembered the jibes, and doubts, and covert sneers of the Middleton people, her father's death, her own anger and revolt, when she had suddenly decided, in the face of their council, entreaties, and commands to take up his work where he had left it. With kaleidoscopic rapidity her thoughts flew over the events of the ensuing months--the meeting with Vil Holland, her disappointment in the Watts ranch, her eager acceptance of the sheep camp, the long weary weeks of patiently riding along rock walls, taking each valley in turn, the growing fear of running out of funds before she could locate the claim. She shuddered as she thought of Monk Bethune, and of how nearly she had fallen a victim to his machinations. Her thoughts returned to Vil Holland, her "guardian devil of the hills," who had turned out to be in reality a guardian angel in disguise. "Very much in disguise," she smiled, "with his jug of whisky." Nobody who had helped make up her little world of people in the hill country was forgotten, the Thompsons, the Samuelsons, and the Wattses--she thought of them all. "Why, I--I love every one of them," she cried, as though the discovery surprised her. "They're all, every one of them, real friends--they're not like the others, the smug, sleek, best citizens of Middleton. And I'll not forget one of them. We'll file that whole vein from one end to the other!" Catching up her horse, she mounted, and sat for a moment irresolute. "I could make town, sometime to-night," she mused, and then her eyes rested for a moment upon her horse's neck where the white alkali dust lay upon the rough, sweat-dried hair. "No," she decided. "We'll