"Don’t go outside my tracks here. There’s a flat rock on the down side that ends in a ledge. Not a pretty slide t’ take," he shouted once.
Again it was: "Be careful ahead here under that rock. Brace toward the inside of the trail. We may get a few pounds of snow on our heads."
For half an hour longer they tramped on steadily. Ross ached in every muscle. His feet were beginning to cramp. They almost refused to raise the snow-shoes and push them forward. Miller slackened his speed when he saw that Ross was nearly played out.
"A few minutes more, and we’re there," he explained. "Keep up your courage."
And at that moment Ross thought he had need of courage. They had been descending the mountain gradually above timber-line, zigzagging back and forth across the face in such a way as would enable them to use their snow-shoes to the best advantage. Now the storm lightened just enough toenable Ross to see they were traveling along the edge of a cliff with an overhanging fringe of trees, and the cliff appeared to the boy to be the jumping off place into space. Right and left as far as the falling snow permitted him to see the cliff extended. Above was the white bulk of the mountain; below was nothing but storm.
Along this cliff Miller had walked slowly, pausing occasionally to look up into the trees. Finally he gave a grunt of satisfaction, and, throwing his staff and the heavy pouch on the rock, took from the snow-laden branches of a pine a coil of slender new rope.
"Nerves good?" he asked jokingly.
"For what?" was Ross’s startled response.
Miller explained. Ross saw that for the first time the colored goggles were no longer astride the other’s nose. His cap was drawn down over his eyes, however, and his coat collar was turned up so that not much of his face was visible save his nose.
"If it was summer," began Miller, busying himself with the rope, "we could get around this here little rock. But now there’s nothin’ t’ do but go over it, because the mountain on each side shelves down so steep now we couldn’t git down on snow-shoes or off ’em to save our necks. We’d bring down a load of snow on our heads if we should try."
As he talked, he knotted the rope securely around a tree standing near the edge of the rock. "Right here the cliff slopes so I can just slide you down," Miller’s gruff voice ran on in jerks, "and then I can slide after ye. But I take it you ain’t used to mountains and this sort of game, and so I guess ye’d better hitch the end round yer waist."
He tossed the end of the rope to Ross. "Take off yer shoes, and pack ’em in your hand," he directed when with numb, trembling fingers the boy had knotted the rope. "Forty feet down," Miller continued, "you’ll come to a ledge. Stop there, and free the line."
A moment more, snow-shoes in hand, Ross was on his back sliding down an almost perpendicular wall, his hair doing its best to raise his cap from his head. Slowly he was let down, down, so far as he could see, into space. Then suddenly, just as he had closed his eyes in dizzy terror, his feet struck snow into which he sank to his knees, and the rope above slackened.
The ledge had stopped him, but it seemed to Ross but an insecure footing hung between heaven and earth. It was a mere path across the face of the cliff not more than three feet wide at the widest part.
Ross untied the end; and then, as he felt itjerked from behind him, he covered his eyes with his hand and stood shivering, crowding back against the cliff.
It was the work of a moment only for Miller to slide down the rope and stand beside him.
"Hug the cliff," directed Ross’s conductor shortly, "and follow me. No, don’t put on your shoes. I’ll break the trail fer ye."
Slowly they crawled across the face of the cliff, the ledge leading downward. At the base they were in a winding cañon scarcely twenty yards wide. Here they buckled on their snow-shoes again.
"If," said Miller, bending over the straps, "we see it’s best fer you t’ stay a few days with my pard and let me go back and help Uncle Jake, I wouldn’t do much investigatin’ of the premises around here if I was you."
Ross shuddered, and looked up at the face of the cliff, obscured now not only by the storm, but by the coming darkness.
"No investigating for me!" he exclaimed forcefully.
Then they began the tramp up the cañon, the shadow from the wooded mountains deepening every moment. Finally, Miller made a sharp turn around a group of seven spruces standing at the foot of a peak, and cautiously approached alog shack that stood half buried in the snow, and had as its corner posts four tall trees. The snow was shoveled away from the door and window, and a light smoke arose from the joint of stovepipe projecting from the roof.
At the door Miller stopped and listened. "Guess he’s asleep," he whispered. "Take off yer shoes out here."
Ross stooped, and unbuckled his snow-shoes.
"Guess the fire must be low," whispered Miller. "Wisht you’d go round the corner there, and load up with wood while I go in and see what he’s up to. But don’t come in till I tell ye to. I’ll sort of prepare him to see ye."
Ross did as he was bidden. He found the path to the pile of pine chunks partly broken; but, with his numb fingers incased in huge mittens, it was not easy work to dig out the wood frozen under its covering of snow. But finally, his arms full, he staggered around the corner of the shack, and stood again in front of the door. So busy had he been at the wood-pile that he had not thought of listening for sounds within the shack.
Now, as he stood in the dusk before the door, he was surprised at the stillness within, and also by the fact that the window beyond the door showed no light. With a growing but vague uneasiness he waited, chilled to the bone by the wind, whichhad begun to suck through the cañon and whistle along the sides of the mountains.
The few moments during which he waited seemed to him like years. Then he raised the wooden latch softly, and opened the door. Darkness and silence greeted him.
"Mr. Miller," he whispered.
No reply.
"Miller!" His voice rose sharply.
The wind soughed through the branches over his head; and a sharp flurry of snow, forerunner of the blizzard, assailed him, while from the open door came a whiff of warmth.
Ross dropped the wood outside, and, stepping within the shack, closed the door, and groped his way toward the stove, from the front of which came a faint glow.
Pulling off his mittens, he held his hands over the heat, at the same time holding his breath that he might hear the breathing of the sick man. But all he heard was the beating of the blood in his own ears.
Working some life into his fingers, he tore open the front of his fur-lined coat, and, pulling a match out of his pocket, lighted it, and held it above his head. In the further corner of the cabin was a bunk, from beneath the blankets of which the straw protruded. Trembling so that he couldscarcely walk, Ross started across the floor. Half-way to the bunk his match burned out. He retreated to the stove, and lit another. This time he succeeded in reaching the bunk. Several blankets were spread over a foundation of straw. Otherwise the bunk was empty.
A panic seized Ross. "Miller!" he shouted, "Miller!"
The wind howled through the cañon. The trees above the shack swayed and grated their interlocked branches together.
Striking a third match, Ross observed a candle stuck into a hole in a piece of wood which lay on the table. He lighted it, and sank into a chair beside the table.
What had happened? Where was Miller? Where was the sick partner?
Ross took off his cap, and laid it on the table. In bewilderment he ran his fingers through his hair.
Suddenly his eyes fell on something in the shadow beside the door. He went to it. It was the heavily loaded game pouch. Evidently Miller had opened the door, dropped that inside, and vanished into the night.
Ross was reaching for the pouch when another thought struck him so forcibly that he jerked himself to a standing posture with a loudexclamation. Hastily opening the door, he stopped and, throwing the wood about, peered through the darkness, searching the open space where he had parted from Miller.
His snow-shoes were gone.
Thedisappearance of the snow-shoes, instead of proving to Ross that he had been hoaxed, at first, only deepened his bewilderment. Finally, the idea found lodgment in his brain that Miller’s partner had wandered off in the storm delirious, and Miller, having found him gone, had followed, forgetting Ross. The boy was too confused to weigh the probabilities of such forgetfulness, especially in view of the missing snow-shoes. Therefore, the moment the idea occurred to him he acted on it, hurrying out into the storm with the intention of going to Miller’s assistance.
But, without snow-shoes, he found himself helpless. He had not gone a dozen yards from the door before he sank half-way to his waist in the snow. Scrambling hastily back again, he ran around the cabin where the snow was not so deep, and struggled up the mountainside.
"Miller!" he shouted desperately. "Miller, where are you?"
Here and there among the trees he plungedfrantically until the fear that he could not find his way to the shack drove him back.
He filled the stove with wood, snuffed the candle mechanically, and looked about him. Then for the first time he realized that there was but one bunk.
"If two men lived here, there would be two bunks," he said slowly; and then came the conviction that Miller had decoyed him here and deserted him, taking the snow-shoes along. But Ross’s brain was too numb to pursue the thought. Exhausted by his long tramp and by his fruitless battle with the snow, he filled the stove with chunks, closed the draughts, and, without stopping to blow out the candle, rolled into the bunk, and was asleep before he had pulled all the blankets over him.
When he awoke, the shack was filled with a light, which, although exceedingly dim, was unmistakably daylight. Outside, the snow was piled to the top of the window. The candle was burned out and the fire low. Ross crawled out stiffly, every muscle aching and sore. Filling the stove, he looked at his watch. Twelve o’clock! He had slept away the morning.
Outside the blizzard raged in unabated fury, but so sheltered was the shack by scrub hemlocks and banks of snow roof-high, that but little wind found its way through the mud-chinked log walls.
Standing over the fire, Ross looked at the dark outlines of the one bunk, and considered his situation. His heart sank when he thought of the miles which Miller and he had put between themselves and Meadow Creek Valley.
And who was Miller?
Ross’s suspicions, of course, had fastened to the McKenzies. But why had they considered it necessary to have him marooned so far from Meadow Creek? How did they know that the dynamite had been found? When they left Meadow Creek––
"Oh!" cried Ross aloud at this point. He brought the stove poker down vigorously on top of the stove. "That blast under Soapweed Ledge! I wanted ’em to hear it–guess they didn’t fail!" Ruefully he turned from the stove. He was certainly paying for his little triumph.
But who was Miller?
The lack of wood in the cabin soon turned his attention from the answer to the necessity for immediate action. He found a large wooden snow-shovel behind the stove; and, opening the door cautiously in order to prevent a mass of snow from following it, he cleared away a space in front of the door and the two windows, and shoveled his way to the wood-pile.
It was not until he was struggling around thecorner of the shack with an armful of wood that he realized that his weakness and tremors were due not only to anxiety, but to hunger; and with that realization came a fear which nearly induced another panic. Was there food in the cabin? So great had been his absorption that he had not noticed the contents of the shack beyond those things which he had required for immediate use.
Throwing the armful of wood down beside the stove, he proceeded to make a hurried search, the results of which quieted his fears. The cabin was as well stocked with provisions as Weimer’s. A portion of these supplies, the canned milk, vegetables, and fruits, he found in boxes beneath the bunk. Sacks of flour and meal were suspended from the roof logs to protect them from the "pack" rats. Having investigated these provisions, Ross opened a second door at the back of the shack, supposing it led out-of-doors. But he was agreeably surprised to find it led to a little lean-to of logs, where were suspended a large ham, strips of bacon, jerked meat, and quantities of fresh venison all frozen. The door protected these from the heat inside the shack, while the logs, unchinked, gave protection from timber wolves and coyotes, but not from the snow, which had sifted in over everything.
Ross at once set about getting breakfast. Hefound every necessary cooking utensil at hand. The cabin was–as such cabins go–completely furnished and, it appeared, must have been inhabited not long ago by a stout man; for in a box at the head of the bunk he found some clothing much too large for him or for the man who had brought him there.
"But," he thought, as he sat down to venison steak and flapjacks, "whoever owns the cabin, Miller must have gone from here to Meadow Creek, because there was a fire here last night when I came in; and it was a fire fixed to keep some hours, too."
As he finished eating, his eyes fell on the game pouch still bulging beside the door. He had not looked inside. With a piece of steak balanced on his fork he crossed the floor. Then:
"Books!" he cried aloud. "Mybooks!"
The fork fell from his hand. He dropped to his knees and emptied the pouch. Besides the appliances which he had given to Miller to carry there were all his books, the medical text-books which he had left in the emergency chest in Weimer’s shack. He could scarcely believe his eyes. He sat back on his heels, and stared.
"Weston!" he finally shouted. "Miller is Weston!"
Suddenly rising, his eyes narrowed and his lipscompressed, he kicked the game pouch across the floor in a gust of anger caused by an illumination of certain circumstances which explained the events of the previous day.
"I’m slow," he muttered between clinched teeth. "Any one can get the better of me."
He recalled Weston’s imitation of different people the night he and Waymart had come to Weimer’s together and Sandy’s displeasure at the exhibition. Sitting down in an armchair beside the table–the only chair in the shack–he followed his chain of evidence link by link. The conversation which he had overheard between Waymart and Sandy the night of the latter’s return from Cody was fully explained–the some one whose assistance they might need in Meadow Creek Valley, but who would not come unless some one else had left.
"Weston would not come with Leslie there for fear he’d be recognized," thought Ross. "Therefore, Sandy took steps to remove Leslie and–yes–in spite of the mess I made of it, I blocked the game!"
Then, despite his anxiety, Ross grinned. Of course the McKenzies had not expected Leslie to return any more than they had expected the dynamite to be found. But after hearing his signal of discovery they had sent Weston, theskilful impersonator, to maroon him here–where? Ross dropped forward his head on the table and groaned.
"They brought me here to get rid of me entirely," he finished; "and I came voluntarily!"
Presently he picked up the pouch, intending to hang it on a nail in the logs beside the door. It was not quite empty; and, lifting the flap he looked in. At the bottom lay a few wads of newspaper. Ross concluded that the pouch had been stuffed with these when Weston came to Weimer’s. Then, when he went back after the books, he had thrown out the paper, the presence of which had prevented his companion from noticing much difference in the pouch after the books were put into it. Ross picked up one of the pieces, and glanced at it listlessly. It was a page of the Cody "Gazette." He dropped it back into the pouch.
"I wonder what he told Uncle Jake and Leslie when he got the books," thought Ross, hanging up the bag.
Leslie was the only comfort the situation held for him, and this merely came from the knowledge that Weimer was not alone. For, of course, Weston having seen the boy in Meadow Creek would return and block the work somehow, probably steal the dynamite again, and convey it farther than the tool house.
Here Ross started up in a sort of frenzy, and, putting on his top-coat and cap, rushed out-of-doors. He would find a way out. There must be a way, for Miller had gone back–Ross felt sure he had returned–and if Miller had he could! He would save the claims yet. The first plunge into the snow, waist-deep now, with the whip-lash of the blizzard in his face, brought him to his senses.
"This is folly," he thought as he dropped once more into the chair beside the table, "when I have no idea where I am."
But, even if he did know, his snow-shoes were gone; and without them he could not safely venture–nor with them, either, he decided, recalling with a sick shudder the snow-filled ravines against which Miller had warned him–Miller, indeed!
His bitterness came back with a rush. After all he had done for Weston this was the final reward. Weston had shaved his beard, recolored his hair and the fringe of whiskers left beneath his chin, covered his deep brown eyes with goggles, and brought his benefactor of Dry Creek here to spend months in this deadly loneliness! That was the thanks he gave "Doc Tenderfoot" for saving his life.
That night the storm ceased and a warm wind arose. The next morning Ross again shoveledout the doorway, window, and wood-pile. The sky was clear, but the sun did not swing over the towering peak which rose almost perpendicular, opposite the cabin, until ten o’clock. But, when it did show its face, it looked down on a bewildering mass of snow. Ross gazed longingly down the cañon, which wound like a serpent between the overhanging mountains. Down there not half a mile away a ledge ran diagonally across the face of a cliff; and Ross felt impelled to go to the foot of that cliff, and find out whether or not the rope still dangled from its summit. But well he knew that even so short a journey would be impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. However, if the warm wind continued and the sky remained unclouded, perhaps in a day or two there would be a crust on the snow of sufficient strength to bear his weight. Then he would investigate.
Meanwhile he tried to force himself calmly to the business of living and planning. He was there. So far as he could see there was no escape. He would make the best and the most of the months of his banishment. When he arrived at this conclusion, he found himself relenting a trifle toward Weston on account of the books. It had been no light load to pack across the mountains on a tramp which had lasted many hours.
"Perhaps Weston has a piece of heart, after all," Ross mused the following morning, "but so thoroughly is he under Sandy’s control that he dare not show it."
Before him on the table lay Piersol’s "Histology," although he was totally unable to focus his scattered thoughts on the contents. He was anxiously watching the weather. The warm wind had continued, but the sky was lowering. Another storm was brewing. Finally Ross left Piersol and going to the door, looked out anxiously over the cañon.
"The snow is settling finely," he decided, "and if the cold comes before the storm the crust will hold me up."
He went back to the armchair and began drumming nervously on the arms. He wondered how it had chanced to be packed so far over the narrow trails. A chair, a "store chair," that is, was an uncommon sight among the mountains. From which point had it been brought, Cody or Red Lodge? The latter, he knew, was more than one hundred miles from the Shoshones, while Cody was but eighty.
However, nearness depended not so much on miles as on accessibility, and for the thousandth time Ross wondered where he was.
He could not reason from the memory of thetortuous windings of that stormy afternoon’s journey, with no view of the sun’s face to guide him; but his strong impression was that he was many miles northwest of Meadow Creek, with at least three chains of peaks between him and Weimer.
Then he fell to wondering again about the shack. Did it belong to one of the McKenzie relatives? Who had given it over to his use for the winter? He suspected that, while the furnishings and the clothing had been left there by the owner, the McKenzies had planned for his winter’s residence, and had partially, at least, stocked his larder, as the owner would not be likely to desert such a supply of meat, especially the fresh venison. Perhaps the venison was due to Weston’s forethought. Ross liked to think that Weston had done all that he dared do for the comfort of "Doc Tenderfoot."
"He’s a bigger man," mused "Doc"; "and yet he seems more than half afraid of Sandy. Wonder what the trouble is."
That night the wind changed, the temperature dropped, and the next morning snow began to fall, lightly, however. Again and again Ross went out for trial trips on the fast freezing crust, but not until afternoon did he venture on the journey to the cliff.
The shack stood among the trees on the mountainside about ten feet above the level of the cañon. Taking with him a long pole with a sharpened end, which he found in the shack, Ross slid from tree to tree until he gained the level of the cañon. Then, hugging the foot of the mountain closely, that he might judge of the lay of the land by the trees, and so avoid the dreaded creeks and gorges, he turned down the cañon toward the cliff.
It was difficult walking, the crust being smooth and slippery. Several times one foot broke through, and each time Ross’s heart seemed to rise in his throat when he considered that he was walking on a body of snow deeper than he was high. The cañon had no distinguishing features. It might have been any one of a dozen located among the Shoshones, and all of them unfamiliar to the young man lost in their midst. On either side, the mountains, dreary and lonely and lifeless, arose precipitately. It was windless in the cañon, but on top of the mountains a white, cold cloud of snow played perpetually.
But Ross’s eyes were eagerly searching the mountain at the left for the cliff; and presently he recognized it despite the curtain of snow drifting across its face. There it was, stretching up until his neck ached in the effort to scan the top, where in an unbroken line along the edge hung a great body of snow, the undisturbed accumulations of the last blizzard. The steep side of the cliff, however, was bare, and Ross failed to discover a rope dangling over its surface.
THE SNOW HID IT FROM VIEW
THE SNOW HID IT FROM VIEW
He thought he had not expected to see it there, and so could not account for the sinking of his heart when he found it gone. For a few moments he stood looking down the cañon hemmed in by its great mountain barriers. He fully realized the fact that he was a prisoner within those barriers, perfectly helpless until released by the brief summer.
With bent head he turned his back to the cliff and cautiously retraced his steps while a wildly whirling "squall" suddenly caught him in its clutches. He had gone but a short distance before a sound in the rear caused him to wheel about and listen sharply. Only a smother of snow, swirling up the cañon, met his eyes and a blast of the rising wind his ears. Hesitating, he struggled back a few steps and turned his face up toward the cliff. The snow hid it from view. He stood listening again, and, presently, the sound, above him and a little in advance, again mingled with the roar of the wind. Ross broke into a run, panting through the storm, breaking through the crust, struggling to his feet and tumbling on again. It wascertainly the call of a human voice, although no words were distinguishable because of the noise of the wind.
Ross, obsessed by one idea, raised his voice: "Miller–Weston!" he yelled frantically. "I’m here–below here! Where are you?"
But the wind swooped down on him, seized his words and bore them down the cañon. Then it suddenly died away, and again the snow fell quietly, mistily, and Ross, looking up, saw, as in a nightmare, a rope dangling across the face of the cliff. In bewildered joyousness he pressed his hand against his eyes and looked again.
"It’s there!" he cried, "but it certainly wasn’t ten minutes ago. That’s the queerest–I know I saw straight before––"
He opened his lips to call again, but the call was checked by the discovery of a man half-way down the cliff, creeping along on what looked to be a thread of snow fastened diagonally across the dark surface of the rock, but which Ross at once recognized as the narrow ledge he himself had trod only three days before. Slowly the figure was progressing, its feet kicking away the snow lodged on the ledge, its hands clinging to the bare face of the cliff. Then, faintly into the lull of the storm a nervous voice floated down to Ross from the thread-like path.
"I’m almost down, I guess, Miller. Hope I can get to the cabin before another squall strikes us."
Then, from the top of the cliff, the barely distinguishable words behind the veil of falling snow, "All right. Remember you’ll find Doc not half a mile straight ahead. The cabin’s on the right, as I’ve told ye. It’s above a bunch of seven spruces. Ye won’t need yer snow-shoes–crust’ll hold down there."
Ross waited to hear no more. "Leslie!" he yelled joyously. "Ho, Leslie! I’m down here. Come on! Hurray for that rope again!"
But even as the hurray ascended the side of the cliff, so did the rope. Snakily, jerkily, the knotted end traveled upward until it disappeared in the cloud of snow that hid the mountain tops.
From this cloud came a faint and far-away voice: "Good luck t’ ye! Tell Doc ye’re in the same boat as he is. He’ll savvy!"
Thepresence of Leslie without snow-shoes, the disappearance of the rope, and Weston’s voice caused Ross to "savvy" immediately in impotent anger and bitter disappointment. But not until the two boys had reached the cabin and Leslie was warming himself beside the hot stove, did he fully comprehend the trick that had been played on him.
"Weston!" he exclaimed stupidly in answer to Ross’s explanation. "Why, this isn’t the man you told about at Sagehen Roost–it’s the Miller that you went away with. I saw that Weston fellow, you know. They’re not the same!"
"It’s evident that when you’ve seen Weston you’ve seen any number of men that he cares to imitate. This Miller is Weston, the McKenzies’ cousin and the man you––" Here Ross checked himself, as Leslie had not yet connected the dark-haired Weston with the light-haired Oklahoma man of the same name.
Finally, after supper, Leslie recovered from his bewilderment sufficiently to tell connectedly thestory of the days that had intervened between Ross’s departure from Meadow Creek and his own.
"Begin at the beginning," urged Ross finally, putting a pine chunk in the stove and snuffing the candle.
He had seated the newcomer in the armchair beside the fire, while he sat on an overturned box in front of the stove door and within reach of a heap of wood. On the table at his elbow lay the gun which Steele had insisted on adding to his equipment the day he arrived in Meadow Creek and which he had not since touched. Leslie had brought it strapped across his shoulders and with it all the ammunition which Steele had provided. This was another proof of Weston’s strangely curious good will that continued to puzzle Ross. How the unsuspecting Leslie was prevailed on to bring the limited arsenal was a part of the story which Ross was demanding. While the storm raged outside and the dim candle-light flickered and cast long uncanny shadows within, and the pine chunk flamed and cracked cheerily filling the room with a warmth grateful to the chilled narrator, Leslie complied with the request to "begin at the beginning."
"I’d no sooner seen your back, Ross, as you followed Miller out of the door, than I had an awfully uncomfortable feeling of responsibility.By the time the storm had swallowed you two up, the whole outfit there at Weimer’s was sitting hard on my shoulders. We watched you out of sight, Uncle Jake and I, and then we went back into the cabin and, Ross, if that cabin seems to Uncle Jake now as–well–as–when you left––"
Leslie paused and stared at the candle. Ross drew his seat nearer the stove and cleared his throat.
"Uncle Jake has stayed there a lot in the winter all alone, you must remember. He was telling me about it not long ago, how the––"
Above the cabin, through the roaring and soughing of the wind among the spruce, came the long drawn yelling, harassed, pitiful cry of a coyote. From the cañon the cry was answered. Again and again the two human-like voices wailed despairingly at each other while the boys involuntarily drew nearer together and Ross laid a caressing hand on the gun and finished his speech:
"That’s exactly what Uncle Jake told me–how the coyotes and wolves prowled around, and he didn’t mind them nor the loneliness at all."
Leslie nodded. "I noticed that he didn’t seem to mind your being away in the same way I did. He just took to his pipe and his bunk and seemed settled for a rest until you got back again. That didn’t add any to my restfulness, I can tell you, for what could I do up in the tunnel without him?I rustled around a bit trying to decide what to do when the door opened and there was Miller again, or Weston rather. I was as surprised as they make ’em until he said:
"’Say, young feller, Doc he sent me back t’ round up a book on medicine that he may need. It’ll be layin’ round loose som’ers, maybe in that hair covered chist of hisn.’"
Leslie went on to say that when he had opened Ross’s emergency chest Weston professed to have forgotten the name of the book he had been directed to fetch, and, consequently, had taken all the books, stuffing them carelessly into his game pouch. Then the storm had again swallowed him up.
"After he went away," said Leslie, "I got to thinking pretty strongly about the dynamite. If it was so easy for one man to get into the valley from the land only knew where, why couldn’t the McKenzies make their way back and spirit the dynamite off for good and all? We’d gone and touched off that charge under Soapweed Ledge to make ’em understand that we had it again, you know."
"Yes, I know!" affirmed Ross grimly. "Geese that we were!"
"Well, those sticks got on my nerves, and I made up my mind to fasten them up if such a thing were possible. So I put on my snow-shoesand began to rattle around in the storm to see what I could do. I thought no one could come up into the tool house from under because of the mass of snow all around, and because the dynamite box was so heavy with all of your and our and the McKenzies’ sticks in it that it held the floor boards down with a vengeance. But I wasn’t taking any chances after seeing what our ’friends the enemy’ were capable of doing, so I got all the spike nails that Weimer had and nailed down the floor. Then I plowed through the storm up to Wilson’s shack, shoveled my way in, collected all the tools that could be used to pry or hammer with and brought ’em back to our tool house. And with them, Ross, I brought a great padlock and chain that I recollected seeing up there rusty and unused. I oiled it and put a bar across the tool-house door and padlocked it. And if I do say it, it would cost a man some time and strength and racket to get into that shack. It would also take some tools, and there’s none in the valley except what are behind that locked door, for before night came I had raided the McKenzie cabin and brought over all their tools. Then," continued Leslie, "I went to sleep feeling some better."
"I’ll bet you," cried Ross eagerly, "that it’s because you fastened up the dynamite that you’re here! I do believe that when Weston went backit would have been easier to cache that if he could have got it than to have brought you here."
"I don’t know, Ross." Leslie gave a short laugh. "It was easy enough to get me here, as easy as to get you. I–but you want the story as it comes."
"Every word of it. Go on. The next day––"
The next day, Leslie continued, so furious a blizzard was raging that he didn’t work in the tunnel but spent the time keeping open the trails to the dump, the wood-pile and the spring. But the second day, the sky having cleared, he tried his best to get Weimer to work.
"Ich vill vork mit Doc," was Uncle Jake’s declaration of independence, "mit you, nein!"
"You can imagine, Ross, how much work I did alone, not used to going ahead with the blasting. When I came down at noon the old fellow had dished up a capital dinner. He washed the dishes, but not one step would he budge to the tunnel. Said that you were likely to drop in any time that day and he’d stay in and watch for you. Said it would be work enough for him to do to fill you up after your long tramp through the snow! He simply boiled over with ready excuses. When I went up to the tunnel I left him with his goggles on, swinging open the door about once in two minutes for a look over on Soapweed Ledge. You know it was clear that day and––"
Here Leslie suddenly paused and sat up with a jerk. He gripped the arms of the chair and gave a startled exclamation.
"See here, Ross, that clearness business has reminded me of something that I noticed in the morning, and, because I thought it couldn’t be true, I paid but little attention. But now I know–well, this is what it was: when I reached the dump I glanced across the valley at the McKenzie shack. It seemed completely buried in snow except the roof and the chimney stovepipe, and at first I imagined that I saw heat coming out of that stovepipe! You know how, after a hot fire, the heat will crinkle the air above a chimney and no smoke in sight?"
"That’s so!" exclaimed Ross. "And you think––"
"At the time I thought it was a mere notion of mine, but now I believe I saw correctly, and that Weston was there waiting to dispose of my case."
"That’s the idea," agreed Ross excitedly. "There all the time after he left me, probably. He had likely got him a hot breakfast before you were up and then let the fire die."
Leslie nodded. "Same as I did when I was hiding down in Miners’ Camp. But, anyway, I didn’t investigate and forgot all about that chimney until this minute."
Here Leslie broke off to ask abruptly, "Another thing, Ross, right here before I forget. The day you left, you remember Uncle Jake was sick and you went down to get dinner and left me in the tunnel?"
"Yes."
"Well, only a few minutes after you left I looked out and you, as I supposed then, stood in the mouth of the tunnel––"
"Nope, ’twas Weston," interrupted Ross. "He said he went up there first. He came to the shack from that direction."
"Then he got a squint at the work and the dynamite and your assistant right then! I thought it was queer I didn’t get an answer when I yelled to know if you had dinner ready. But just as I spoke, the figure took a sneak, and I supposed you had just stopped a bit to look things over."
"Weston was attending to that, evidently," retorted Ross promptly. "But now let’s see–you’ve brought the happenings up to to-day, haven’t you?"
"Not quite," Leslie answered. "I’ll be there in a minute, though. Yesterday I got as uneasy as Weimer over your not getting back, and Miller, or Weston, I mean, not coming as he promised. I confess I was in a blue funk by afternoon, and I saw things were shaping for another storm. I wentslipping and sliding out beside the dump a dozen times where I could look over to Soapweed Ledge while Uncle Jake tramped around outside the shack continually watching for you."
"Poor Uncle Jake!" muttered Ross stirring uneasily.
"Well, that brings me to to-day," Leslie began after a pause. "I was down beside the dump looking for you about eleven o’clock this morning when I saw him coming over the Ledge–Weston, I mean. Same goggles, same cap drawn down over his ears, same outfit except the game pouch. I noticed as soon as he came near that the pouch was gone. Tell you what, Ross, I made tracks down the trail, got my snow-shoes on and went to meet him. I would have hurried to meet a Hottentot! Uncle Jake stayed behind jabbering in German, and fairly dancing up and down in his excitement because you had not come with Weston."
Ross, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms, staring at Leslie, saw in a flash the latter as he had appeared at Sagehen Roost, overbearing and dictatorial. Then he saw him running across the lonely valley of Meadow Creek eager to meet any one on a fraternal footing.
"Weston must have left his shack and made a long trip behind it up the mountain and around over the summit to have come in on the Ledge;don’t you think so?" asked Ross. "He probably didn’t want to run any risk of being seen."
Leslie assented and went on with his story. He had gone to meet Weston with a demand as to Ross’s whereabouts and return.
"Don’t ye worry none about Doc," Weston declared heartily. "He’s fixin’ things fine over our way. Doc’s all right!"
"So he is," Leslie agreed, "and for that reason we want him right here, Uncle Jake and I!"
"Wall," Weston drawled good-naturedly, "he says the same about you even t’ wantin’ ye where he is now for a day."
"What do you mean?" Leslie asked.
The two had been walking back toward the shack and the frantic Weimer, and Weston did not explain until he had assured Uncle Jake of Ross’s safety and health, and was seated beside the stove.
"Not once while he was there," Leslie told Ross, "not even when he was eating dinner, did he take off his cap–merely pushed it back a little. Uncle Jake urged him to shed it, but he just grinned and said he had a bald spot on the top of his head, and had got into the habit of wearing his cap all the time to keep that spot warm. Said he guessed he wouldn’t ’bust into that habit now.’ I thought he was an odd Dick to get into such a habit, and with a fur cap, too, but it was all so plausible, Ross,everything he said was said with such an air of truth, that I didn’t once suspect."
"No more did I," confessed Ross.
"And then, of course, I was awfully interested in what he had to tell, and ask me to do. He told a clever lie, Ross. He said that you had brought down an elk with his gun and wanted me to come back with him and the sled you had made to help the McKenzies haul supplies, and help pack the venison over the mountains for our winter meat. It was all the more clever because I knew that meat was all we needed to make our winter’s supplies good. The story hit Uncle Jake in the right spot, too. He hurried up dinner for us to be gone before the big snow came. Weston thought we could reach his cabin that night and make it back again to-morrow morning with the elk meat. He said it would be a pretty good pull for the three of us, but as there was a good crust we could make it with that sled. Why, Doc, there wasn’t a suspicion of deceit in his manner. He said you had fixed his pard up all right and would leave some stuff for him, and so didn’t need to stay any longer. So I went up to the tool house and got the sled out and we started––"
"The gun," interrupted Ross. "Did you think of the gun?"
"Not much I didn’t! That was Weston. Just as we were starting off he turned back and said:
"’See here, young feller. Doc said as how ye was t’ bring his gun along and mebby he could bring down a mountain sheep as we come back. They is a lot of them animals over with us.’"
So the two had turned back and Leslie strapped Ross’s gun across his shoulders. He carried the ammunition. Weston insisted on taking all of it along as he and his partner had run short, and Ross had promised them a share of his! Then they had started out, and, screened by the veil of gently falling snow, entered on the same tortuous, winding, upward trail that Ross and Weston had taken a few days previously.
"And all the way," Leslie continued, "whenever the trail let us walk together, he was telling me a long yarn about the day you and he had spent chasing that elk whose meat we were going after. I listened, Ross, with my mouth opened half the time, and wished a dozen times, if I did once, that I had been with you.
"Well, as the afternoon passed, the storm became heavier, and part of the way we couldn’t see a dozen feet before us, and finally I think Weston himself was uncertain of our way although he said he wasn’t. It must have been about four o’clock when we came to the head of the ledge. Weston searched and groped along until he came to a tree where a rope was already tied.
"’It’s the one I used fer Doc and me,’" he explained and slung it over the cliff.
"He had been hauling the sled along, while all I had to carry was the gun and ammunition. Now he said that I had better leave my snow-shoes on top of the cliff and tie the end of the rope around my waist and he would let me down to the ledge. That I was to kick clear of snow and then go up the cañon and get you to come down and help heave the sled over and get it down to the cañon. He said you would know better than I how to do that. He kept giving me directions about where to find the cabin, for the snow had thickened until we couldn’t see the ledge, to say nothing of the cañon. You see, Ross, I’ll confess I was too nervous about going over into space attached to that rope to think that his proceeding was queer. I just didn’t question a thing, but shut my eyes and went over. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why my snow-shoes, instead of that gun, weren’t tied on my shoulders. Well, I struck the ledge and untied the rope and felt my way along that ticklish shelf until the squall lifted and then–you know the rest. If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget how I felt when that rope was drawn up and he yelled down that I was to tell you I was in the same boat that you were!"
It was late and Leslie was too tired to talklonger. Ross gave him the bunk and, waiting only long enough to fill the stove with wood, close the draughts and blow out the candles, wrapped up in a blanket and lay down beside the stove, his coat for a pillow. He did not fall asleep at once, but lay staring up at the flicker of firelight dancing about on the mud-chinked logs overhead.
After all his planning and working, he thought, his mission in the mountains was doomed to failure. The claims would pass into the McKenzies’ hands, and, besides, he would have missed one year of the preparation for the work he had chosen. He rolled over and half groaned.
"Awake, Ross?" came from the bunk. "I’m so tired I haven’t dropped off yet and, besides–say, Ross, here I am and there’s dad waiting for me to turn up with that missing five hundred–and then your claims–we’re not exactly in luck, are we? I feel as though I’d like to get my hands on that Weston-Miller fellow’s throat."
"There’s one thing I can do, though–study," muttered Ross. "That I’ve got to hold myself to."
Conversation languished then, and both boys fell asleep, Ross’s last thought being of Weimer watching for their return in the lonely valley of Meadow Creek.
By daylight the following morning the two wereup, full of plans for living and doing during the long months of their imprisonment.
"There are some nails, but no hammer," said Ross. "But we can drive ’em with a stick of wood and fix up another bunk out of these two boxes. They’re the longest, and I think they’ll fill the bill for my five feet ten. Then we’ll divide the straw and the blankets, and by keeping up the fire all night, I guess we won’t freeze to death."
On the floor in the corner back of the stove they built the bunk. There were not nails enough nor were the boxes strong enough to allow of making a substantial bunk such as the owner of the shack had built against the side logs.
Until the bunk was completed, Leslie, while working docilely enough under the older boy’s direction, regarded the more comfortable bunk as his permanent possession. He had never been taught to be unselfish. He had from his motherless childhood demanded what he wished and received it until the question arose of his continued attendance in school. There he had taken the course he wished and was now paying for it dearly. It was not until he was dividing the straw in his bunk and had come across Ross’s watch and pocketbook that the idea smote him hard that the other had vacated the easier bunk in a wordless generosity that he, Leslie, had never practiced,and that he had not even thanked the bunk’s former occupant.
"See here, Ross," he began brusquely, "you needn’t think that you’re going to rest your old bones in the new bunk all the time, for you ain’t! I shall try it myself half the time."
"Week and week about, then," Ross agreed. "And this brings us up against a calendar. I brought my watch, thank fortune! But what about a calendar? I want to be sure that I know when the 4th of July gets here, for Steele says you’d never know it except by the calendar, there’s so much snow."
"Snow!" groaned Leslie. "Snow! There’s never a time when there isn’t snow in these mountains, it seems. Well, I know what day to-morrow is, and–have you a pencil?"
Ross slapped the breast pocket of his slicker. "Yep, a long one. And there’s one in the pockets of the trousers you’ll find in that box," nodding toward the repository of the shack owner’s clothing. "Guess we will keep a record of the days up on the side logs. I know how many in each month when I say that old jingle, ’Thirty days hath September,’ etc."
But the need of a calendar was not so pressing as the need of wood. The few days that Ross had spent in the shack had caused an alarming shrinkagein the pile of chunks already cut; and Ross, commencing to shovel his way to the nearest pine tree, now ran across a number of logs which had been "snaked" down the mountainside before the snow came, and lay ready for the axe and saw.
"I guess if Aunt Anne were here, she’d not complain that I took no exercise," he muttered grimly, shouldering a short cross cut saw.
While he sawed Leslie got dinner. After dinner Leslie took his turn at the saw and axe while Ross considered the matter of the calendar. Looking about the shack, his glance fell on Weston’s game pouch. He had hung it on a peg driven between two side logs and had forgotten it.
"The very thing!" he exclaimed aloud. "We can mark the days on the margin of the old newspapers that are in the bottom of that pouch."
Taking the bag down he dumped the crushed papers out on the table, and sitting down, began to smooth them out, glancing over the contents idly. He found nothing which interested him until he reached the last wad. When he spread this out, he found, stuck to the newspaper by candle-drippings, a scrap of coarse note paper which at once riveted his attention. It contained only the latter part of one sentence and the first part of another.
"––come and help us out, and no foolingabout it, either. If you back out I will turn you over to old man Quinn––"
Over and over Ross read these words. They were few and short, but to him now they were the intelligible index to a whole volume. The scrap was stuck to a "Gazette" bearing a date which was just previous to Weston’s appearance in Meadow Creek. There was no name to show that Sandy had written the letter, but Ross knew Weston had escaped from Oklahoma. No doubt Sandy possessed the knowledge that compelled his obedience.
Ross drew a long breath. "Strange what parts of two sentences may tell a fellow!"
"Tell a fellow what?" demanded Leslie’s curious voice at his elbow. A hand came over his shoulder and pinned the paper down to the table while Leslie read the contents aloud.
"’Old man Quinn,’" he finished excitedly. "Why, that is my father, but–Lon Weston–say, what does that mean, Ross?"
Foran instant Ross made no reply. He sat with his back to the door and had not heard Leslie enter. Turning slowly he looked up with puzzled eyes.
"Less, there’s something that I’ve not told you before–because–I guess because I’ve thought it wasn’t fair to tell. But after Weston has brought us away off here and dumped us in this wilderness–even if he has done it out of fear of Sandy–well, it seems to me that about now he has forfeited all right to my silence."
Leslie fell back in astonishment, the scraps of the letter still in his hand. "Doc, are you getting luny? What are you talking about?"
Ross laughed ruefully. "Just thinking out loud, that’s all. Now I’ll get right down to business about Weston. You said you knew a fellow in Oklahoma by his name–Lon Weston."
Leslie pursed his lips incredulously. "Yes, but as I said, our Lon Weston had light hair anddidn’t murder the King’s English like this man, and he hadn’t a husky voice."
"Just so!" cried Ross triumphantly. "Neither does this Lon Weston murder the English language when he is talking like himself, nor has he a husky voice naturally nor has he dark hair! It’s colored dark–near the roots, as I found out, it’s light."
"Jiminy crickstones!" cried Leslie excitedly. "If that’s true, it’s one on me! Come to think of it, Weston was forever imitating folks, but I never have seen him in such a serious imitation as this. How do you know all about him, anyway?"
From this Ross proceeded to tell what he knew except Weston’s connection with the note laid under the electric bulb in the bedroom of "The Irma." That much he felt himself pledged not to relate, but its omission, really, in no way detracted from the proof of Weston’s identity. Furthermore, Ross, concerned only with that identity, began his recital with Sheepy’s talk about Weston forgetting the photograph which had revealed the injured man’s name.
"You can see," Ross concluded, "by putting together all the evidence, that he is the fourth man your father is after, and that Sandy has come it over him completely, knowing that he is the fourth. The more I think of it the more I’m convinced of Sandy’s power. Sandy holds thiscudgel over his head and makes him do the dirty work. But, no matter how big the cudgel is, he had no business to play this low-down trick on us."
"Wait till we get out of here!" declared Leslie wrathfully, "and I’ll make him pay for his trick!" Suddenly his face lighted. "Ross, see here! Dad has been hunting for that fourth man for two years, and if I can go to him and tell him who it is and set him on the right track, well–I’ll stand in better with dad, that’s all! The five hundred that I can’t begin to earn until next summer won’t be in it beside that information!"
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light died out of the boy’s face. He sat down on the table and rubbed his forehead in perplexity.
"But, Ross, there’s another side to this. For me to do that would knock things endwise with Sue."
"Sue," repeated Ross, "who is Sue?"
"I’ve got a sister," explained Leslie. "She’s four or five years older. She keeps house for us. She’s an awfully good girl, Sue is, although," turning his head shamefacedly away, "she’d be surprised to hear me say so, for we, dad and I, have made her a lot of trouble. Dad’s as up and down with her as with me and I–say, Ross, I’ve been a nuisance at home!"
Leslie choked. He looked slowly around thecramped, dirty, ill-lighted room, so unlike the neat, pleasant home presided over by Sue, and swallowed hard. Ross industriously made notches in the edge of the table with his pocket-knife.
Finally Leslie, clearing his throat, continued, "I guess all this serves me about right. I know I ought to be kicked–and I am being–in a way. Well, it’s always been up to Sue to put up with us both, and she has. And then three years ago Lon Weston came. You see, Ross, dad is a sheep owner, and North Bend is on the edge of the range between sheep and cattle, and that always means war. About three miles away is a cattle ranch, and Peck, the owner, and dad are always by the ears. It was at Peck’s that Lon was foreman, and he used to come over to North Bend to see my sister whenever dad would let ’im, but things were never very smooth for ’em. Of course, I didn’t see much of him because I was off at school most of the year. I was away when the cattlemen had their big round-up two years ago in the fall. After each had cut out his own bunch of cattle and shipped ’em, a lot of the boys went on a drunk and dad lost his sheep. Naturally he went up in the air at the loss and was at the throat of every cattle owner and cowboy for miles around. And, first thing, of course he came down on Sue about Lon’s coming to the house and forbid ’er to seehim again, not because he suspected Lon, but just because he was Peck’s foreman and a cowboy.
"Well, Lon cleared out right off and Sue cried herself sick. She never said anything, but I’ve guessed that Lon never has written to ’er and I’m afraid she’s foolish enough," tolerantly, "to think a lot of him.
"But I never suspected that Lon was in the bunch that sent dad’s sheep over, and I know that no one else around the ranch suspects it, because of Lon’s coming to see Sue right along. Still–there were times when he was a pretty rough customer, and–it’s a mixed up mess, ain’t it, Ross, along with Sue?"
Ross had been leaning forward on the table listening eagerly. Two or three times he had started to interrupt, and had checked himself with difficulty. Now he burst out:
"I had forgotten the girl’s photo in Lon’s pocket, Leslie. I know now it’s Sue’s picture, because it looks like you. It fell out of his pocket at Sagehen Roost, and both Hank and I saw it, and then, when you came, you puzzled Hank because he thought he had seen you before!"
"The very idea!" exclaimed Leslie indignantly when Ross had told him about the name on the photograph. "How dare he carry my sister’s picture around with him after doing dad such adirty trick. Oh, I have it in for him all right! I don’t wonder the McKenzies knew they had to get rid of me before they could make Lon come over to Meadow Creek! I see now! I presume he thinks that dad has been on his track these two years. I wonder if Sandy and Waymart were with Peck at the same time Lon was?"
For a long time the boys talked over the affair in all its bearings, and as the long lonely days passed, they recalled every incident that had occurred since they left Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. Their conversations mostly took place in the evening by the light of one dim candle, or in the darkness relieved only by the flicker of the firelight, as candles were not plenty. It was at that dreary time between day and night with the wind and the coyotes howling outside that the homesickness that they could fight successfully in daylight had its inning.
"But what if I were here alone!" Ross exclaimed periodically.
His gratitude at having Leslie there softened his anger at Weston, although he knew that the bringing of Leslie had been no philanthropic move on Weston’s part.
Soon, however, the boys settled to a routine of work, exercise and study planned by Ross and acquiesced in by Leslie, all, at first, save the study.In that Ross began with no thought of aid from the other or partnership with him until one day when he sat with a book on anatomy before him industriously absorbing the pages. Presently, turning his book over on its face, he resolutely closed his eyes against the outer world, and his ears against Leslie’s lively whistle, mentally reviewing the facts he had been conning. Suddenly Leslie, who had been lying in the bunk, came over to the table and, picking up the text-book, lazily bade Ross think aloud.
"It’s so deadly lonely, Ross, with you poring over those dull books," complained Leslie, "that I’d rather hear you recite than not to hear anything at all!"
From this trifling beginning, a student partnership grew up. At first the task meant to Leslie only a form of passing the time away, of hearing a human voice instead of the crackle of the fire and the sough of the wind. Then, gradually, his interest in the subject of anatomy was awakened. He began to look at himself with a new interest.
"I say, Ross," he burst out one day when he was frying bacon, "I never have thought of myself before as being made up of parts that must work together smoothly–and I never considered how they must work and that some one or other must know just how they ought to work so thathe can put ’em together if they fall out of place. Now, about that femur, and ball and socket joint at the hip here––"
Immediately Ross plunged into a lively description which soon led both boys to the books for proof and illustration, and Leslie’s interest grew. From being merely the holder of the book while Ross recited and explained what he had studied, Leslie, the "hater" of studies, began to study also, at first, in a fitful way, and then more steadily as Ross proved himself an enthusiastic teacher.
Neither, however, became so absorbed in his studies as to become reconciled to his enforced residence above the seven spruces. Day after day they ventured out and up and down the cañon, or up the side of the mountain on the side of which their shack was located, but no discoveries resulted. The absence of snow-shoes made travel impossible except on top of a strong crust, and even then a realization of a constantly increasing danger resulted in making such trips shorter and shorter. The danger was this: blizzard succeeded blizzard until the willows, ten feet tall, which grew thickly in the cañon, were completely concealed, also the scrub hemlocks and quaking asp on the mountainside. The tops of the bushes, lashed by the wind until they became finally snow covered, formed each a dangerous hollow under acrust thinner and weaker than the surrounding surface. This painful discovery was made by Leslie.
One bright day, leaving Ross to cut off the branches of a tree that he had felled for fire-wood, Leslie took the gun and started down the cañon on a tour of exploration.
"The crust is stout enough to hold up an ox, Doc," he declared, bringing the butt of the gun down on it hard, "and I’m going out to see what there is to see–and shoot."
"Shoot!" echoed Ross, poising the axe in air. "I’d like to see something shootable up here beside coyotes, and we never see them–only hear ’em!" and the axe descended with a thud.
Leslie laughed, shouldered the gun and tramped briskly down the cañon, while Ross wielded the axe and, whistling cheerfully, thought of the progress he was making in his studies.
Presently, he rested on his axe handle and chafed his cheeks and nose briskly with the shaggy mittens he had found in the box of clothing left in the shack. "I don’t want any more frost bites in mine!" he muttered. He had had several experiences of the kind that winter, the altitude being so great that he did not realize the intense cold until nose or cheek or ear had become frost nipped.
He was resuming his axe when a faint soundtraveled up the cañon on the wings of a slow south wind. Ross straightened himself and listened. Again came the wind and the sound. With the axe in his hand he slipped and slid down the mountainside until he stood in the cañon below the seven spruce trees. There he paused long enough to distinguish in the sound the faint muffled cry, "Ross!" and "Help!"
"Coming!" yelled Ross frantically. "Where are you?"
He did not await a reply but, slipping unsteadily along the icy crust, he hurried down the cañon in the general direction of Leslie’s voice, yelling intermittently, "Coming–here I am! Where are you, Less?"
As he came to the cliff over which he had been lowered into the cañon, he heard Leslie’s voice again, still curiously muffled, although evidently only a little way in advance. It seemed to rise from beneath the ground.
"Hold on, Ross. Don’t come fast. I’ve fallen through among the willows."
Cautiously Ross advanced toward the voice, testing the strength of the crust at every step until it gave under the stamping of his heel. Then he stopped and found himself looking down a section of shelving crust into a hole filled with loose snow, willow tops–and Leslie.
"Great guns!" cried Ross. "What are you doing in there?"
Leslie attempted to respond nonchalantly, but his face was nearly as white as the bed of snow he was occupying, and his teeth chattered with cold and fright.
"I’ve been flopping around here for half an hour yelling," he explained jerkily, "and have only managed to sink deeper and break off more crust and more willow tops."
"Rub your nose and face the next thing you do," advised Ross immediately, "or you’ll be a mass of frost bite."
He rubbed his own nose meditatively. Then grasping the axe he cried cheerfully, "Hold the fort a while longer down there, Less, and relief will arrive. See here! I hadn’t finished the wood and I ran off with the axe. Now I’ll skiddoo and cut a pole and help you out. And don’t forget to rub your face!"
Laboriously and fearfully–lest he meet with Leslie’s fate–Ross climbed the side of the mountain until he stood among the branches of a sturdy spruce, the depth of snow raising him to that height. Cutting and trimming a long limb, he dragged it back to the cañon. Projecting one end over the hole he sat hard on the other. Then Leslie, by jumping and seizing the projecting end, andbracing against the sloping sheet of crust, climbed, breathless but relieved, to the surface of the snow.
"I tell you what, Ross," he said emphatically as they made their way gingerly back to the shack, "I’ve done all the research work I want to in this cañon!" He shivered and slapped his hands smartly together. "Without snow-shoes we are helpless here, and the McKenzies know it!"
To make snow-shoes without boards or small nails or a hammer was impossible to workmen of their inexperience. They broke up some boxes and put in all their spare time for days experimenting, but to no purpose.
"Even if we did succeed, Less," Ross comforted himself one day as he looked gloomily at their latest failure, "we couldn’t escape from here. We have no idea where we are, whether we are nearer Red Lodge or Cody or Timbuctoo. We would merely start out and leave a half-way comfortable certainty for a mighty ticklish uncertainty."
"That’s right," agreed Leslie, "and we couldn’t pack enough food on our backs to last many days, nor can we tell when a storm is coming."
In fact, storms were the order of the day. By the middle of February immense masses of snow curled out over the cliffs on the side of the mountain opposite the shack waiting for the warm chinooks of spring to send them hurtling downinto the cañon. Fortunately, the mountain above the shack was lower than its neighbors, and the face, heavily wooded, sloped back more gently until it reached a great elevation.
"The trees here prove that there have been no snowslides within the memory of this generation, at any rate," Ross broke out one day as they were sawing the branches from a spruce on the mountainside above the shack. "Now, if the shack were on the other side––"
"But it wouldn’t be built on the other side," interrupted Leslie. "No cabin builder would do such a thing unless he built when he first struck this country as young and green as we were!"
Ross laughed and started the branch he had trimmed down the mountainside on the crust. It skidded along rapidly until it wedged itself into a great snow bank which had drifted from the shack to the trees on either side, and through which the boys had tunneled. With the last branch sent home in this convenient fashion, Ross shouldered the axe and picked up the saw, while Leslie took the gun from a near-by branch where it had been slung, and followed down the mountainside.
With the increase in the depth of the snow, the coyotes and gray wolves had grown bolder, and without the gun the boys never went now outside of their dooryard, as they called the spaces theyhad cleared around the shack. So far, however, the coyotes had only skulked near the strongly built lean-to, attracted by the smell of the meat, while the wolves contented themselves by howling at night from the rocks far above the cabin, and being answered from the mountainside opposite.