"Bud."
"Bud, eh? Short for brother. Folks got a fam'ly." He reflected that Bud's sister, if he had one, might be nice-looking. "Well, Bud, I'm under obligations to ye, for hitchin' up the plug in the shade. 'Twas thoughtful. Where ha' ye been?"
"I've been hunting Dad. But he's off in the hills. If I could get ye to our camp----"
"The plug'll have to do it. Unhitch him."
Bud untied the animal, who limped even more acutely than his master. Perhaps he lacked his master's grit. Jeff was the colour of parchment when he found himself in the saddle, whereon he sat huddled up, gripping the horn.
"Freeze on," said the boy.
"You bet," Jeff replied laconically.
Bud led the horse a few yards down the road, passing from it into the chaparral. Thence, through a tangled wilderness of scrub-oak and manzanita, down a steep slope, into a pretty cañon.
"Here we are."
A sudden turn of the trail revealed a squatter's hut built of rough lumber, and standing beneath a live-oak. A small creek was babbling its way to the Salinas River. The clearing in front of the hut was strewn with empty tins. A tumble-down shed encircled by a corral was on the other side of the creek. Jeff knew at once that he was looking at one of the innumerable mountain-claims taken up by Eastern settlers in the days of the great land boom, and forsaken by them a couple of years afterwards.