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XIV For the Sake of Humanity 125 XV In Desperate Struggle for Life 135 XVI The Screaming Winds of Night 143 XVII The Barbarian Meets His Ingomar 151 XVIII On Sunny Seas Bound North 159 XIX Death Ships of the Sea 167 XX A Daughter of the Cherokees 176 XXI Carson’s Blank Pages in Life 185 XXII A Voice from Centuries Past 195 XXIII The Two Old Black Crows 205 XXIV The Reckless Hand of Fate 214 XXV Cords of Love Are Strong 223 XXVI When the Death Gloom Gathers 231 XXVII A Night of Tragedies 240 XXVIII From out the Shadowy Past 249

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Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew

We built our cabin high on the slopes of the Sangre de Christo range, overlooking the broad, level San Luis Valley, in Colorado. At the rear of the cabin rose a towering cliff or rather a huge slab of rock standing edgewise more than two hundred feet high, apparently the upheaval of some mighty convulsion of nature in ages gone. Near the base of this cliff flowed a clear crystal spring.

Some hundred yards west of the cabin was the mouth of a tunnel into which we had drifted with pick, shovel and giant powder, a distance of 300 feet in five months of hard toil. A trail led from the 10 tunnel to the cabin along the mountain side, which was thickly studded with tall pines. Another trail led down the mountain slopes in a winding way to the valley, almost a mile below. Above, reaching far into the blue dome of the sky, rose the peaks of the snow-capped Sangre de Christo, glistening in the morning sunlight, which threw gaunt, fantastic shadows in cañon and deep ravine.

It was a wild, weird scene, where man, in strength and vigor, seems to imbibe a portion of the divine essence that lives, and moves, and has its being in the vast solitudes.

We struck pay rock at the first thirty feet of tunneling, so Amos’ assay showed, and the rock had gradually increased in value, week by week. Buchan would take samples of the ore every week or ten days and walk a distance of twenty-five miles to Saguache, where old man Amos, expert geologist and assayer, would for two dollars and fifty cents make out a clean printed slip with figures in red ink, showing so 11 many ounces of lead, copper, silver and gold to the ton.

The ore had not yet reached a value which would pay to ship it, but the increase of values was so steady, and Amos was so extravagantly encouraging, that we were always in buoyant expectation of rich ore. He would say, “You boys have a wonderful prospect. Keep right on with your work; it is getting richer with every stroke of your pick and you are likely to uncover a million