"Halloo, Murray, what's that? Look! Are they houses?"
"Steve! Steve!"
It was no wonder at all that they both broke into a clean run, and that they did not halt again until they stood in the edge of a second grove not far from the margin of the full-banked stream of water which wound down from the mountains and ran across that plateau.
Trees, groves, grass, in all directions, and a herd of deer were feeding at no great distance, but it was not at any of these that the two "pale-faced Lipans" were gazing.
"Houses, Murray!—houses!"
"They were houses once, Steve. Good ones, too. I've heard of such before. These are not like what I've seen in Mexico."
"They're all in ruins. Some one has started a settlement here and had to give it up. Maybe they came to work my mine."
It was less than half an hour since he had stumbled over it, and yet Steve was already thinking of that ledge as "my mine."
It does not take us a great while to acquire a feeling of ownership for anything we take a great liking to.
"Settlement! Work your mine!" exclaimed Murray. "Why, Steve, the people that built those houses were all dead and gone before even the Apaches came here. Nobody knows who they were. Not even the wisest men in the world."