Thompson grinned. "No, Miss, Vil ain't no saint--an' he ain't no devil--neither. But somewheres between the two of 'em is the place where good men fits in--an' that's Vil. You're all het up needless, an' barkin' up the wrong tree, as folks used to say back where I come from. Just come and have a talk with Miz T. She'll straighten you around all right. I'll slip in an' tell her to set the coffee-pot on, an' you kin take yer time about gittin' to town." Thompson disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later when he returned with his wife, the two stared in amazement at the flying figure that was just swinging from the lane into the long white trail. Hours later the girl crossed the Mosquito Flats, forded the river, and passed along the sandy street of the town. Her eyes felt hot and tired from continual straining ahead in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of a fallen horse, whose rider must continue his way on foot. But the plain was deserted, and the only evidence that anyone had proceeded her was an occasional glimpse of hoof prints in the white dust of the trail. A short distance up the street, standing "tied to the ground" before the hitching rail of a little false-front saloon, was Lightning. Patty noted as she passed that he showed signs of hard riding, and that the inevitable jug dangled motionless from the saddle horn. Her lips stiffened, and her hand tightened on the bridle reins, as she forced her eyes to the front. Farther on, she could see the little white-painted frame office of the register. She would pass it by--no use for her to go there. She must find Len Christie and tell him she had come to teach his school. A great wave of repugnance swept over her, engulfed her, as her eyes traveled over the rows of small wooden houses with their stiff, uncomfortable porches, their treeless yards, and their flaunting paintiness. "And to think, that I've got to _live_ in one of them!" she murmured, dully. "Nothing could be worse--except the hotel." Opposite the register's office she pulled up, and gazed in fascination at the open door. Then deliberately she reined her horse to the sidewalk and dismounted. The characteristic thoroughness that had marked the progress of her search for her father's claim, and had impelled her to return to the false claim and procure the notice, and that very morning had prompted her to ride against the slender chance of Vil Holland's meeting with a mishap, impelled her now to read for herself the entry of her father's strike. The register shoved his black skull-cap a trifle back upon his shiny head, adjusted his thick eyeglasses, and smiled into the face of the girl. "Things must be looking up out in the hills," he hazarded. "You're the second one to-day and it ain't noon yet." "I presume Mr. Holland has been here." "Yes, Vil come in. I guess he's around somewheres. He----" "Relinquished one claim and filed another?" "That's just what he done."