Clifford Warlow and Ralph Moreland sprang after the vanishing figure, unheeding the wild shrieks of Maud and Grace, who begged them not to follow the frightful apparition. As the young men disappeared among the trees, Mrs. Warlow fell prone upon the earth with a low moan; and while all of the party that remained forgot their terror in their efforts to restore her from the death-like swoon in which she had fallen, the young men returned, reporting a fruitless search.
It was now proposed, as Mrs. Warlow had revived, that the boys--Clifford, Ralph, Scott, and Robbie--should make a more extended search with the three dogs; but they could not force the terror-stricken animals to leave the camp-fire, where they cowered trembling with fear. So the search again proved unavailing.
Those were busy days which followed--days all too short for the years of labor that loomed so drearily before the pioneers; but they set to work bravely, plowing, building, and planning, and the manifold cares of their new, strange life left no time for repining over the events of the past, or even to investigate the nature of that strange visitant which had so startled them with its fleeting appearance.
Although a hurried search was made near the Old Corral, no trace of the lost treasure could be discovered; and whenever the subject was mentioned, or the hope expressed of the ultimate recovery of the princely treasure, the colonel would discourage it as delusive and visionary, and would say that the surest way to recover the lost fortune was to extract the gold from the soil through the medium of the plow and an application of good "horse sense" to their farming.
Several masons were employed from the nearest town, forty miles distant, and, after tearing down the walls of the Old Corral, the stone was utilized in building, first, a dwelling for Colonel Warlow in the grove in the river's bend; next, a cottage for Clifford on the site of the old stronghold, which had been entirely obliterated, save that portion which had fallen over Colonel Warlow years ago, and which had so providentially shielded him from death. The entire party had decided that it should remain as a monument of the past, and accordingly the stones which had been hurled down by the drunken fury of the Indians, were replaced carefully; so the wall now appeared as it did a quarter of a century before, on the night of that terrible tragedy.