Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/229

Rh and half a dozen steel crowbars, with a set of drills, at another store.

He dropped into the office of the newspaper and chatted with the editor. The newspaperman was a progressive and Sheridan had talked with him before concerning irrigation and alfalfa possibilities, without mentioning Lake of the Wood or the details of his project.

There was talk of a new tourist hotel, he told Sheridan, and waxed eloquent over Pioche's climate and attractions. Some such lead Sheridan had hoped for.

"Isn't there a show-place somewhere round here called the Painted Rocks, or, in Mexican, the City of Silence?" he asked. "Something like the Garden of the Gods at Manitou, in Colorado? Rocks that look like castles and churches? Seems to me I heard about such a place, or read of it, but I've been pretty busy against picnics." Sheridan watched the editor closely under cover of his cigar smoke. If there had been any whisper of the affair with Hollister it should leak out now. But that fear dissolved.

"Garden of the Gods? Huh!" grunted the newspaperman disdainfully. "The City of Silence is a shout to a whisper besides that. I wrote it up one time, five years ago. You want to see it, Sheridan, to believe it. I had a photographer along and I got an article in a magazine about it. The World at Large. Ever read it?"

"No. I'd like to." The editor began to fish among some shelves.

"Some show place to boast about. All sorts of