"No. Couldn't guess within twenty miles or so."
Patty looked him squarely in the eyes: "I found it over where Monk Bethune has just staked a claim. And he staked that particular claim because it was the spot I had indicated on a map that I prepared especially for the benefit of the man who has been searching my cabin all summer."
Holland nodded gravely, without showing the slightest trace of surprise. "Oh, that's where I dropped it, eh? I figured Monk thought he'd found somethin', the way he come out of your cabin the last time he searched it, so I followed him to the place you'd salted for him." He paused, and for the first time since she had known him, Patty thought she detected a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "He didn't waste much time there—just clawed around a few minutes where you'd pecked up the dirt, an' then sunk his stakes, an' wrote out his notice, an' high-tailed for the register's office. That was a pretty smart trick of yours but it wouldn't have fooled anyone that knows rock. Bethune's no prospector. He's a Canada crook—whisky runner, an' cattle rustler, an' gambler. Somehow, he'd got a suspicion that your father made a strike he'd never filed, an' he's been tryin' to get holt of it ever since. I looked your plant over after he'd hit for town to file, an' when I tumbled to the game, I let him go ahead."
"But, suppose the rock had been right? Suppose, it had really been daddy's claim?"
"Buck can run rings around that cayuse of his any old day. I expect, if the rock had be'n right, Monk Bethune would of met up with an adventure of some sort a long ways before he hit town."
"You knew he was searching my cabin all the time?"
"Yes, I knew that. But, I saw you was a match for 'em—him an' the fake Lord, too."
"Is that the reason you threw Lord Clendenning into the creek, that day?"
"Yes, that was the reason. I come along an' caught him at it. Comical, wasn't it? I 'most laughed. I saw you slip back into the brush, but I'd got so far along with it I couldn't help finishin'. You thought the wrong man got throw'd in."
"You knew I thought that of you—and you didn't hate me?"