were the Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were getting on their wraps, Paula was proposing for the following afternoon a trip down to the Sacramento River to look over Dick’s experiment in rice-raising.

“I had something else in view,” he told her. “You know the mountain pasture above Sycamore Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in the last ten days.”

“Mountain lions!” Paula cried.

“Two at least. — Strayed in from the north,” he explained to Graham. “They sometimes do that. We got three five years ago. — Moss and Hartley will be there with the dogs waiting. They’ve located two of the beasts. What do you say all of you join me. We can leave right after lunch.”