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Joan knew that great mining-camps were always happy, rich, free, lucky, honest places till the fame of gold brought evil men. And she had not the slightest doubt that the sun of Alder Creek's brief and glad day had set forever. Twilight was stealing down from the hills when Kells announced to his party: "Bate, you and Jesse keep camp. Pearce, you look out for any of the gang.
The wind followed like a whinnying colt in the track of Phoebus's steeds. By and by the farmhouse peeped gray out of its faithful grove; they saw the long lane with its convoy of walnut trees running from the road to the house; they smelled the wild rose and the breath of cool, damp willows in the creek's bed.
"It seems to have insinuated itself beneath this guy's thick skull," replied the poetical one, "and it's a cinch my verses, nor any other would ever get there." The tramp who had plumbed the depths of the creek's foot of water and two feet of soft mud was crawling ashore. "Whadda YOU want now?" inquired Billy Byrne. "A piece o' soap?"
The crops during this summer prospered well, and after clearing up and barreling the ashes made during the stump-burning, Enoch and Bryce ploughed and harrowed the new piece along the creek's edge. They sowed it to winter grain and hung "scare-crows" all about the field to keep the wild birds from pulling up the tender shoots when they appeared above the mold.
The lake lay among the hills to the northward, and the bits of water I had seen were portions of it. I was anxious to break camp and start forward, but this could not be done until Richards' return. Easton, Pete and I paddled up to the creek's mouth, therefore, and spent the day fishing, and landed eighty-seven trout, ranging from a quarter pound to four pounds in weight.
Sometimes it marks a place where you can git down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's dry." "But who built up the rock piles to make these signs?" asked Franklin. "O Lord! now you've got me," said Curly. "I don't know no more about that than you do. Injuns done it, maybe.
There could be no debate on that point, for, while long and strong and flexible, they had a certain evenness and symmetry. They were being idly employed just now. At the creek's edge, half imbedded in the ground, uprose the crest of a granite stone.
The house, and the field on which he had landed, were on the north side of the creek. A half mile below the house, the dirt road leading to the Miller farm crossed the creek on an old military Bailey bridge. Across the creek the road vanished into a forest that came right down to the creek's edge. Rick knew from his overhead view that the forest was only a hundred yards wide along the creek.
This ranch house of the Stevensons', originally built by some Mexican, as Bryant judged, had been standing twenty-five or thirty years and was still tight and staunch. "Your creek's pretty dry, I see," the young fellow remarked afteratime, when they had exchanged news. "By August there won't be any water in it at all," Stevenson said, "except a little that always runs in the cañon.
He was a good deal of a boy at heart and he was much in sympathy with the plan. His remarks showed a mixture of interest, and doubt as to the wisdom of letting himself take so much interest. "Hayre, load me up," he said, much to the surprise of the boys, as they came to the creek's edge. His broad shoulders carried half of the load.
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