“The mines and washings. Gold established Canyon Pass. It isn’t a beautiful spot, but it’s handy. We got to just keep on hoping that the Overhang doesn’t fall.” “There is a place where some of it has fallen—and recently,” Hunt broke in, with some gravity. Half blocking the trail, and bulking along the river’s edge for perhaps ten yards, was a heap of gravel and soil on which no grass or other verdure grew. Looking up the sloping canyon wall they could trace the downfall of this small slide for more than half the distance to the summit. “What is that sticking out of it?” asked Betty. “A stick?” Hurley sniffed like a bird-dog that has just raised a covey. He was to windward of the heap. Hunt had forced his mount nearer from the other side. “That is not a stick,” he said quietly. “It looks to me like——” Hurley ejaculated something that was very near an oath. He flung himself out of his saddle and strode over the rubble. He stopped and examined the thing Betty had seen, even touching it with his gauntleted hand. “Never heard of this,” he muttered. “Odd, I must say!” “What is it?” asked Hunt. “A horse’s leg. Been pecked clean by the vultures—not by coyotes, or the bones would be torn apart. Well!” “Oh, there has been a dreadful accident here! Is somebody buried under that pile of gravel?” demanded Betty. “Not likely. Just a cayuse. Maybe a wandering critter. Happened to be right here—taking a drink at the riverside, maybe—when the slide fell. Or it might have been the cause of the slip. Came down with it,” Hurley explained in jerky sentences. “The weight of the hoss might have broke off a piece of the Overhang and—here he is!” This seemed to satisfy him. He went back to his own horse and mounted again. They rode several miles farther, but Joe Hurley did not seem quite so volatile as usual. Was he “studying” on the buried horse by the riverside? At least, when they rode back toward noon, he fell behind at the point where the small landslip had landed, halting his horse beside it for a moment. He overtook his friends in a short time, however, but did not say anything. As they sighted the ford again, down from the upland on this side came a dashing and brilliant-hued figure—a girl on a cream-colored pony. Hunt recognized Nell Blossom at first glance. “Hi, Nell!” shouted Hurley, raising his hand and arm, palm out, in the Indian peace sign. She scarcely nodded to him, but she grinned elfishly as she rode down into the shallows and her pony’s flying feet spattered them all at the river’s edge. She scarcely seemed to give Hunt and his sister a glance. She plied the quirt that hung from her wrist, and the cream-colored pony recklessly forded the stream and climbed the further bank. “How impolite,” murmured the Eastern girl, brushing the drops from her sleeve. “She’s a little devil,” agreed Hurley frankly. “That’s the lady I was telling you of, Willie. She’s as wild as a jack rabbit.”