“I’ll find the thief!” she told herself with renewed determination.
“But if we make a rich strike before I find him?” She shuddered at thought of the terrible possibilities involved.
Then, shaking herself free from all these brooding thoughts, she shouted: “Ye! Ye! Ye!” to send her dogs spinning away at a reckless speed.
Since the land here was rocky and uneven, this resulted in a spill. Coming to the top of a ridge, the dogs rushed pell mell down the other side and landed all in a heap in a bunch of willows at the bottom.
Joyce was recovering from this spill and her dogs were sitting about her grinning when upon looking up she beheld, not ten paces away, the man she had been following.
She caught her breath in surprise. He was not Jim, nor Clyde, nor Lloyd. Nor was it her father. It was a man she had never seen before.
“Where did you come from?” she wanted to ask, but did not. It gave her a shock to know that she had taken up this man’s trail not half a mile from her cabin and, having followed him for miles, was now alone with him in the great white world.
He was strange, too, and had, she thought, an evil face. “But I must not judge too soon,” she told herself.
The man was short with broad shoulders. He had a dark face that might be French, Indian or half-breed.
“Hello!” he said rather gruffly. “You follow? What want?”