It was wonderfully good to be alive. Her glance traveled from the tiny creek whose shallow waters purled and burbled about her horse's feet, to the high-flung peaks of the mountains, their loftier reaches rearing naked and craggy above the dark green girdle of pines. Slowly and majestically, hardly more than a speck against the blue, an eagle soared. It was a good world--courage and perseverance made things work out right. It was cowardly to despair--to become disheartened. She would find her father's mine--but, first she would prove that Bethune was a scoundrel of the deepest dye. And she would prove, she admitted to herself she wanted to prove, that Vil Holland was all his friends believed him to be. But, she blushed with shame--what must he think of her? Of her defense of Bethune, of her deliberate rudeness, and worst of all, of her night ride with the horse-thieves? He knew she had suspected him--had even accused him. Would he ever regard her as other than a silly fool? Vividly she pictured him as he had looked lashing his way to her through the wildly crowding horse herd, determined, capable, masterful--and wondered vaguely what her answer would have been had he made love to her as Bethune had done? She smiled at the thought of Vil Holland, the unsmiling, the outspoken, the self-sufficient Vil Holland making love!
Upon the summit of a high ridge she paused and gazed down into the little valley where she had located the false claim. A few moments more and she would know to a certainty the identity of the prowler who had repeatedly searched her cabin. Certain as she was whose stakes she would find marking the claim, it was with a rapidly beating heart that she urged her horse into the valley and across the creek toward the rock wall. Yes, there was a stake! And another! And there was the plot of ground she had laboriously broken at the foot of the wall. She swung from the saddle and examined the spot. The rock fragments she had selected from her father's samples were gone! And now to find the notice! As she turned to search for the other stakes, her glance rested upon an object that held her rooted in her tracks. For a moment her heart stopped beating as she stared at the little patch of gray buckskin that lay limp and neglected where it had fallen. Slowly she walked to it, stooped, and recovered it from the ground. It was a gauntleted riding glove--Vil Holland's. She could not be mistaken, she had seen that glove upon the hand of its owner too many times, with its deep buckskin fringe, and the horseshoe embroidered in red and green silk upon its back.