Our way led down through a dense wood and up a rugged height and through a wild pass between hills. Beyond this he showed me where the White Bar Trail crossed our path, that trail of the Boy Scouts which inscribes an erratic oblong course about the region and is met at intervals by spoke trails, as they are called, which converge in a rambling way toward Scout Headquarters at the lakes. Old Buck did not take the Scouts very seriously. All the way he was telling me a queer story. “Me’n Mink lived daown here till he got possessed,” the old man said. “Mink, me’n him was pardners.” “You mean dispossessed--put out?” I suggested. “They can’t put me outer here nor him neither if he was here,” he said. “I got title ter my place ’long as I live. When I go it re-verts.” “You mean it’s taken over as part of the reservation?” “My little gal goes ter the Home then.” “That’s your----” “She’s my granddaughter, she’s a orphant, she’s my son’s little gal.” “Well,” I laughed, “I think you’ll live to be a hundred.” He made no comment upon that, only trudged along ahead of me through the woods, following a sort of path of least resistance, verging here and there the easiest way; one could hardly call it a trail. “So that’s the way they do with the old settlers, hey?” I said. “Let them stay in their old homes as long as they live----” “We can’t rent or sell though,” he said. “Well, I shouldn’t think you’d want to,” I observed. “It’s just the idea of home, of the old homes of your people, that the state is thinking about, I suppose. But wouldn’t your granddaughter have the place when--if she were old enough, I mean?” “She ain’t like ter be old enough,” said he. “Fifteen, that’s all she is.” “You’re mighty lucky to have her,” I observed. He stopped short, quite disregarding my last remark and appeared to be listening. “Yer hear footsteps?” he asked me. “No,” I laughed; “you know what you said about my ears. Why, did you hear someone?” It seemed to me that the silence of the woods was as that of a grave. An unseen bird flitted from one limb to another, causing a quick rustling of leaves as if it had been startled. I could hear a drowsy locust humming his monotonous little solo. He ceased just as I began listening, which is an uncanny way they have. “I guess nobody but you ever comes through here,” I said. “Mink, he’s like to come back,” he said as he moved on. “And how long since Mink went away?” “That’s long ago; he got _po_ssessed--him.” “Yes, tell me about that.” CHAPTER V—Rattlesnake Gulch “Mink Havers, me’n him was pardners,” old Buck said.