Frederick Niven

“ There are not always freighters there, of course; but since the Spring Lake mines opened up, to work steadily day and night, the chances are in favor of seeing, dotting the little pocket valley at Midway, the twinkling camp fires of the freighters outspanned for the night there. Sometimes the only light in the valley is the dropped yellow star of Buck Flannigan's "hotel"—the only one between Ridge and Spring Lake. ”

“ The shivers ran again in Bill Davies' spine, and he could explain them to himself this time—not with utter conviction, however—as being caused by that unwarned and dismal cry. Any fellow feels the melancholy unpleasantness of coyotes' howls, be he lean or fat, town bred or mountain bred. ”

“ Anyhow, this man Thompson-Smith—or Johnson-Smith, he wasn't sure which—was in the country looking at various prospects that the success of the Spring Lake vein was bringing before the gaze of the speculators again. So the boys said, at any rate. Davies gave them "How-do!" in passing, and, interested in horseflesh, as well as in the long, lean Easterner who looked as if he should have been a Westerner, he looked round after them.
"Can ride, all right!" he thought, as he observed a sudden trembling and side dancing and general cavorting of the young engineer's horse at the bend of the road. ”

“ Yes, sir, I guess the horses are wise to that crack there. Horses have a sense we don't have about some things, I guess. They're scared of getting off the wagon road and down that bit of precipice we can't see for bush. Never knew it was there myself."
Though Bill thought Conyers' explanation very lame, compared with his own, he did not think that Conyers was exactly fruitful soil for his nebulous theory, so he left it unspoken. But he took special note that the next time he passed the bend the horses seemed hardly to know they had arrived at the spot of their terrors. ”

“ Of course, men do go into the hills, and never come back; men have accidents as——"
"Plenty men have," said Moyes; "but, all the same——"
"All the same," went on Smith, "we argued from that camp that he intended to come back to it. He hadn't run away from anything, I thought. That camp let me know that it was worth while making inquiries for him. Captain Moyes suggested that he got his supplies from Flannigan, not from Spring Lake. This is so much nearer, you see. His last camp was just up there," and Smith waved a hand. Bill noticed that he looked white and tired. ”

“ Misa Flannig' say, 'What you dlink?' This man he kill look at him, and say nothing at all. He look at him alle same he think Misa Flannig' hide to him. Misa Flannig' say, 'What you dlink?' again one time moah, moah lude, and this mart say, 'Dlink nothin',' he say, 'when you look at me like that.' Misa Flannig' him clazy. ”

“ He was just at that bend where his horses had been walloped once by a former teamster. Somebody was looking at him! And, say, not only his horses were like that here! What was it Conyers had said to him about the place? He peered left and right as he walked. It occurred to him that it would be dark before he could get back to the meadow. He should have brought a lamp. A man might—well, a man might stub a toe, for instance.
Pshaw! There was nothing to stub a toe on. A man had only to keep walking in the deep dust of the road. He looked left and right, and hiked on. He was at the bend ”

“ Of course, a man might have a reason for cutting off from his family, and all old friends, a reason that his own people didn't know; but when we saw that camp, Captain Moyes and I made sure that my brother had intended coming back to it. ”