Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/62

46 been surprised that, while greeting her guests, she could give him so great a place in them. But William Steele, having pondered upon her more than he realized since leaving the ranch house, had now other matters to occupy him. In the first place this trail turning off into the mouth of the cañon was one little travelled and none too well remembered by him. Not for full five years had he ridden it, it was crossed and recrossed by numerous stock trails, the simplest matter in the world being for a man to lose it and after an hour's mistaken travel find himself at the end of a blind path in some tangle of brush. Unless he meant to be the entire afternoon in coming to the spot where he had planned to camp he must keep his wits about him.

"Five years," he mused, even while his eyes, running far ahead, picked up the monument of a flat stone upon a trailside rock marking the way for him, "and it's as safe as if it were tucked away in the United States treasury! I guess, old man, you wouldn't have plunged quite so recklessly if you hadn't had this to come back to. Lord, won't little Trixie throw a fit!"

The thought seemed to tickle his own sort of a sense of humour, for he chuckled his amused satisfaction with the probable approaching condition of affairs. But when he had reached the rock sign-post his eyes were merely keen and watchful again. A herd of young steers just ahead of him had trampled out all sign of path in a little grassy meadow and he was uncertain. Somewhere hereabouts the trail left the bed of the cañon, climbing steeply to mount and cross the ridge, making the short cut to the Goblet. To be sure it was no