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it when I went through his clothes while he was still unconscious, tryin’ to find out who he might be in case he cashed in, and when I asked him ‘bout it, he told me the story. He was plumb willin’ to let me have the rag for a handful of pesos.”
    Huck Brannon was of a practical turn of mind.
    “Why didn’t he, or his father or grandfather, go after the silver?” he asked.
    “I gather they figgered there was a curse on it,” replied Gaylord. “I cal’late there was a lot more to the yarn than what my greaser remembered. Details sorta get lost with ignorant folks like that aftera gen’ration or two. He couldn’t even read the words wrote on the rag and I don’t figger he knowed there was sich a place as Colorado.
    “If I hadn’t happened to know somethin’ ‘bout this section, I’d never been able to figger it out from the map. All he could say was that his grandpappy brought it from the mountains of the north. That nacherly meant northern New Mexico or Colorado—that’s ‘bout as far north as the Spaniards ever got lookin’ for gold and silver—and I figgered the rest. What you say, fellers, willin’ to give it a whirl with me?”
    “Count me in,” Lank replied instantly. “I really b’lieve you got somethin’ here. What you think, Brannon?”
    Huck laughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t much faith in the yarn,” he admitted, “but we haven’t anything particularly pressing on hand just now, and from what you say, the section is less than fifty miles off. So why not?”
    Lank arose with alacrity. “We’ll get an outfit t’gether pronto,” he said. “Picks, shovels, blastin’ powder, grub. I’ll ‘tend to them. Huck, see if you can pick up a coupla burros—I seed some over to the Mexican quarter t’other day. Bring ‘long that gun you took off Coleman; I think I’ll try and pick up a shotgun—grouse and sich sorta busts up the monotony of bacon and beans.”
    The following morning Cale Coleman, lying in an upper story bed beside the window, saw them pass the hospital, loaded burros wagging long ears with simulated docility, the tall figure of Huck Brannon striding in front.
    The mine owner craned his neck, cursed viciously as a twinge shot through his leg, and glared murder after the passing forms. A moment later, however, a speculative gleam replaced the angry light in his eyes. He summoned an orderly and gave him profane instructions. A little later his drift foreman, Jeff Eades, clumped into the room.
    Eades was big, almost as big as his boss, with a hard face, a tight mouth and uncertain eyes. He listened in silence to what Coleman had to say, nodding his head from time to time.
    “Okay,” he said when Coleman had finished. “I’ll put Esteban on the trail. We’ll find out, and then we’ll even things up.”
    Coleman sank back on his pillow after his foreman had departed, in his eyes a look of subtle satisfaction.

IX
Stumped
    Kansas City was only a three-week-old memory to Huck Brannon in Esmeralda, on the day that Sue Doyle stepped off the train at the big woodshed station.
    She strode purposefully down the street. She had been to Kansas City before and knew her way around. Her immediate destination was Ma Hennessey’s rooming house, where the boys had spent the night, before returning to the Bar X.
    The house, a dingy, gray-boarded two-story affair she remembered, was located at the other end of the street. As she walked along, her father’s parting words buzzed through her brain.
    “Yuh’re makin’ a big mistake chasin’ after him, Sue,” he had said. “Even if he is the son of my old friend.”
    But she had been adamant.
    There was one question Sue was glad her father hadn’t asked her, for she didn’t know the answer herself. And that question was what she would do if she did find Huck? She avoided it like the plague, but it returned continually to torment her. The iron clank of the wheels on the train that bore her here had flung the question at her, and