When he had wormed his way to the crest of a hill he had passed about twenty of these shallow holes. Now, at the top, the earth had been literally gophered. The workings here looked newer still; and presently he came upon evidence that proved work had been done not longer than a year before, for dry leaves still clung to the tops of manzanita bushes that had been chopped off and pitched to one side. It has been stated that he was not a miner. Still, having been born and raised in a mining country, he knew something of the geological formations in which gold ordinarily is found. He was in a gold producing country now, yet the specimens that he picked up near the prospect holes proved that only a rank tenderfoot would have searched so persistently in this locality. He picked up a bit of white substance and gave it study. It resembled lithia. The water of his spring contained a trace of lithium salts, according to the analysis furnished him by the State Agricultural College, to which he had mailed a sample. He pocketed the specimen for future reference. As he sat on the edge of this hole, with his feet in it, he heard a rustling in the bushes close at hand. At first he thought it might be caused by a jackrabbit; but soon it became certain that some heavier, larger body was making its way slowly through the chaparral. A coyote? A bobcat? A deer? He carried no gun today, and the swift thought of a mountain lion was a bit unpleasant. He quickly slid from his seat and stretched himself on the ground in the shallow excavation. Oliver was an ardent student of nature, and he liked nothing better than secretly to watch some wild thing as it moved about it its customary routine, unconscious of the gaze of human eyes. Once he had hidden in wild grapevines and watched a skunk searching for bugs along a creekbed, until suddenly the moist bank crumbled beneath him, and he fell, and--But what followed is what might be called an unsavory story. The crackling, scraping sounds drew nearer, but whatever was making them was not moving directly toward him. They ceased abruptly, and then he knew that the man or animal had reached the open space in the brush in which the prospect holes were situated. As the noises were not continued, he began raising himself slowly, until he was able to look over the edge of the hole. It was not a browsing deer nor a hunting coyote upon which he gazed. A squat, dark man, with chaps and spurs and Stetson, was making his way across the open space to the continuation of the chaparral beyond it. His eyes were mere slits, black, Mongolic. He was Digger Foss, the half-white, right-hand man of Adam Selden. The progress of the gunman was not stealthy, for undoubtedly he considered himself particularly safe from observation up here in the wilderness of chaparral. He slouched bow-leggedly across the break in the thicket, and dropped to hands and knees when he reached the edge of it. He disappeared in the chaparral.