The entrance to the cave was merely a large opening in a pile of rocks close beside the cattle trail, and the cave itself was famous throughout the valley solely because of its imagined history and its actual equipment. Because of its nearness to the trail there was little danger of its becoming a lair for wild beasts. People said that the spot had been the dwelling place of a man, educated and wealthy, who had chosen to live and die alone in the wilderness. How they came to know this was never quite clear, for the furnishing of the cave was there, offering its mute history to the first venturesome hunter who had penetrated these wilds years and years ago, just as it was offered to the curious to-day. The educational theory could probably be traced to the torn and yellowing fragments of a book that lay on the rude table opposite the cavern entrance. How many inquisitive fingers had turned its baffling pages, how many curious eyes had vainly scanned them in the course of the slow moving years in which the cavern held its secret? The book was written in a language quite unknown to us simple folk. For the theory of wealth the rusty, crumbling old flint-lock musket, leaning against the wall beside the table, was silver mounted and heavily chased. Beside the table was a rude bench made from a section of sawed pine. That was all, but impressive legends have been handed down, from one generation to another, on less foundation than the cave furnished to our valley romanticists. It was not even odd to us that no one in all these years had stolen or desecrated the pathetic mementos of a vanished life. People on the frontier have a great respect--a respect not necessarily enforced with lock and key--for the belongings of another. The mountings of the gun were of solid silver, but I doubt if even Mr. Horton could have justified himself to himself in taking it. I had been in the place once or twice and had turned over the untelling leaves with reverent fingers, but I had never felt any inclination to linger within the gloomy walls; the sunlight on the cattle trail outside had greater allurements, but now, beaten by the hail, I rushed in headlong, and in doing so nearly fell over the body of a man lying outstretched on the stone floor, just within the entrance. The man was evidently sleeping, and very soundly, for my tumultuous rush roused him so little that he merely turned on one side, sighed, and again relapsed into deepest slumber. I stood in my tracks, trembling, undecided whether to dash out into the storm or run the risk of remaining in the cavern. The fierce rattle of the hail beating on the rocks outside decided me to do the latter. Noiselessly, step by step, I stole backward into the darkness of the cavern. My backward progress was checked at last by the corner of the table against which I brought up. I glanced down at it. It was laden with a regular cowboy equipment of spurs, quirt, revolver, cartridge-belt, and the too common accompaniment of a