Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/160

142 awoke the following morning to find that Hank Dubro was gone.

"He wanted to get an early start," explained the woman. "He is going away back in the hills." After breakfast, Connie sauntered down and examined the sluice box. "I thought so," he muttered. "He is no prospector. This is just a blind—and a blamed clumsy one. He couldn't sluice a dump through that thing in a hundred years. There's no cache here, though. I guess I'll be on my way."

He returned to the cabin, thanked the woman for her hospitality, said good-bye to the children, who protested loud and lustily at thus losing their play-fellow, and started down the creek in the direction from which he had come. A few minutes later he crossed to the opposite side, and doubling back, came out on a faint trail well above the cabin. This trail, following the windings of the stream, grew rougher and steeper as it approached the divide. The keen eyes of the boy told him that some one had recently passed that way—and passed hurriedly. And he smiled as he saw, cached in a niche of rock, a light pick and a battered gold-pan—a pick and pan that he had noticed the