THE SEARCH
OVER fried bacon, sour dough bread and varied "canned goods," Leslie
told his story to an interested and excited audience of two. The day
of Ross's arrest he had shouldered a pack of stuff selected from the
trunk which still stood under the new third bunk, waited until twilight
so that he could not be seen on the trail, and then, on snow-shoes, had
made his way over Crosby and up Wood River canon to Wilson's cabin on
the coal claims.
"You see," he said, a flush sweeping over his face, "I supposed father
was at Cody, and I wouldn't have faced him without that five hundred
dollars for all the gold that may be in these mountains, and, besides,
the way he had taken to get even with me--well, I don't need to say how
it cuts!" Here Leslie bent over his plate in shame. "Although--I--well,
of course, I deserve it, but I didn't think he'd go as far as that."
"Hold on, Less!" Ross jumped up from the table so suddenly that the box
on which he had been sitting was knocked over. "Here's a letter to you
in my care. It has been here so long I had forgotten it."
He pulled the emergency chest from under his bunk and produced both of
Mr. Quinn's letters--the one to himself and the one yet unopened.
"There you are!" he exclaimed, tossing both across the table. "I take
it from what your father says in mine that he thought of the arrest not
as a punishment, but as the way in which he could be sure of getting his
hands on you quickly in Omaha."
Eagerly Leslie read both letters, his troubled face lighting and
softening. "You're right," he said finally in a low tone. "I guess dad
is--is more all right than--than I used to think. I've been no end of
an idiot, frankly."
He folded his letter and slipped it into his slicker pocket while Weimer
urged:
"You was mit dot shack, und dey found you not, hein?"
"But I want to hear about Ross's----"
"No, no," interrupted Ross. "Finish out your story first. Mine will look
like thirty cents at the end of yours. I'm not exactly proud of myself."
"Vilson's shack," prompted Weimer, pushing his plate back and planting
both elbows on the table.
Leslie continued his story in a new exuberance of spirits, occasionally
fingering the letter in his pocket. He had foreseen that Wilson's shack
would be searched, and so, trusting to the drifting snow to conceal
his trail, he had, during the night, packed provisions into one of the
many deserted shacks in the upper camp. He had selected one overlooking
the trail up Crosby. It had two rooms, one behind the other, the back
room having an outside door and but one small window. Leaving the first
room undisturbed, he had stowed his provisions in the back room, which
also contained a bunk.
"I can tell you that it was hard sledding for me until after the sheriff
and the McKenzies came and went that day," he continued ruefully. "I
had brought along my blankets, but I didn't dare light a fire, and I
nearly froze and nearly starved on cold canned stuff. But after the
sheriff had gone back--you see I could watch the camp from the back room
window--and the McKenzies had passed the shack on the trail over here, I
hung blankets over the windows and had a fire nights when the smoke
wouldn't be seen. I could cook at night and early in the morning and so
got along fairly well. But I expected them all back again for another
search, so mornings I used to vacate the outside room and leave it the
same as it had been."
"Why didn't you come over sooner?" asked Ross.
"Don't you see that I couldn't," demanded Leslie, "so long as the
McKenzies were here? I knew, though, that they had told Wilson that
they were not going to stay all winter. They told him they would go
to Cody as soon as they thought the Crosby trail was getting dangerous.
So I watched that trail like a cat for them to go and for my chance to
get here."
"Vilson he vent out," interrupted Weimer.
"Yes, Uncle Jake, I saw him go, but I lay low. I was afraid of the
consequences of being seen. I had no idea that father had been put
off. I was sure he would come on himself, and I knew that if father
once struck my trail he'd unearth me. He never gives up."
"Then, this morning----" prompted Ross.
"Yes, this morning when I saw the McKenzies coming down the trail bag
and baggage, I humped myself to get ready to get over here before their
tracks got filled up. I knew that if they could get one way I could get
the other way to-day, but maybe not to-morrow. And I tell you what," here
Leslie arose and stretched out his arms, "I've been living these weeks
as close and cramped a prisoner as I ever want to be. I could get out
nights a little because the camp came to be about deserted, but I was
cooped up all day in the shack."
Far into the night the boys talked, while Weimer alternately listened and
dozed. When Ross was well launched on the story of his arrest he became
at once embarrassed, wondering how he was going to evade the matter of
Lon Weston and the note. He finally compromised by ending the story
of his capture in a partial account of his conversation with Sandy
in the barroom of "The Irma," and Leslie, taking it for granted that his
father's name and address came from Sandy, did not ask embarrassing
questions.
"It's as I suspected, then," he added slowly. "The McKenzies were
probably employed on the ranches around home at some time. The cowboys
and sheep-herders are always coming into the town, and probably they
all knew me by sight, while I didn't know them one from another."
Ross checked the question which arose to his lips concerning the fourth
man that Mr. Quinn was after, and shortly after, the boys tumbled into
their bunks, Ross with a feeling of deep relief that the third bunk would
be occupied during the winter.
"I didn't do so badly in Cody after all, as it has all turned out," he
thought comfortably as he fell asleep.
He was only half awakened a few moments later by an exclamation from the
third bunk, and heard Leslie say, "By the way, Ross, who was----" then
the question, "Are you asleep?"
Ross, without replying, sank into a deeper sleep, and Leslie said no
more. Weimer was already snoring.
The following morning Ross tumbled out at daybreak and built a roaring
fire in the old cracked heater. He glanced at the third bunk and began
whistling cheerfully. Perhaps they could find the dynamite now that there
was a second with sound eyes to aid in the search and a sound brain to
help plan. If only the sticks could be found the early spring would see
the work completed and the claims patented.
The first thing Weimer did when he arose was to go to the door and survey
sky and mountains with practiced eye, as he sniffed the bracing air.
The sky was overcast and lowering, while a sharp wind drove the snow in
eddies and drifts through the valley.
"Der vill pe a pig storm mit us," he prophesied; "it ist on its vay. It
vill get here in dree, four days."
"Hear that, Less?" shouted Ross at the new bunk. "You turn out and we'll
be off. We've got to unearth that dynamite before any more snow piles
up here around us."
Leslie left his bunk with a bound. "I'm good for it. How's breakfast?
When I filled up last night I thought I'd never need anything more and
here I am as hollow as a drum!"
At the breakfast table, he suddenly bethought himself of the question he
had meant to ask the previous night. "I say, Doc," he exclaimed, "who
was the third man with the McKenzies yesterday? My cabin wasn't near
enough the trail so that I could see."
Ross hesitated and Weimer answered, "Dot vas a cousin of the McKenzies,
name of Lon Veston."
There was a clatter and a fall as knife and fork slipped out of Leslie's
hands. "Lon Weston!" he ejaculated. "Lon Weston here? A cousin of the
McKenzies?"
"Know him?" asked Ross.
Leslie picked up his fork. "Know Lon? Well, I should say so. He's made
trouble enough at home----" He bit his lips suddenly and stopped, adding,
"He was foreman on a ranch near North Bend for a couple of years. He--he
used to come to our house a good deal."
In a flash Ross recalled the photo that had dropped out of Weston's
pocket at Sagehen Roost, the pretty girl face, and instantly he knew
why Hank had said of Leslie when he rode away with Wilson, "Seems as
if I'd seen that there young feller before."
"Yes, they are surely brother and sister," Ross decided, his gaze fixed
critically on Leslie's downcast face. "They look tremendously alike."
"Veston, he vas de man dot Doc here mended," Weimer volunteered. "Doc
vas at Dry Creek mit Veston."
Leslie glanced quickly across the table. "Not the man who was there when
I passed through--the day I was with Wilson--not that one, Ross?"
"The same," nodded Ross. "He's the Lon Weston that I know."
"Then he isn't the Lon Weston that I know," said Leslie with conviction
and also relief. "That man at Dry Creek had dark hair, while the ranch
foreman had hair as light almost as Sandy's. Not the same at all."
And because of the note at "The Irma," Ross did not contradict Leslie,
did not tell him that Weston's hair was still light beneath its dye of
chestnut brown.
"But some day," he thought, "I can ask him about the fourth man that his
father is after, and so find out about Weston in a roundabout way."
But the search for the dynamite soon proved so strenuous that all thought
of the crime committed on the North Fork faded from Ross's mind. Day
after day the boys continued the search while Weimer stayed in the cabin
"rustling grub" and giving suggestions. The theft of the sticks seemed
to have shocked the man into something of his former mental keenness
and industry. Not once did Ross have to urge him to his household tasks.
When the boys tramped into the cabin at noon or long after darkness
had fallen, they found a hearty appetizing meal prepared, the cook even
going to the length of objecting to their washing the dishes.
"If you dem sticks find," he would say, "Ich vill stay mit dese dishes."
"Uncle Jake," exclaimed Ross at noon the third day of the hunt, "I'm
discouraged. We have poked into every spot for miles around where such a
lot of dynamite could be hidden--and then have gone again."
"I'm almost ready to believe," declared Leslie, "that the boys had the
sticks in their packs when they left."
Weimer shook his head. "No, never would dose poys pe so foolish. Dose
sticks are here, hein? Somewhere in Meadow Creek Valley ve vill find
dem," but the old man's voice broke on the declaration.
"Of course it couldn't be that the McKenzies carried them away,"
affirmed Ross. "If there had been six men of them they couldn't have
carried away all the dynamite that we had and Wilson had and they had.
In fact they couldn't have carried it all very far that night and in
the teeth of the awful storm that howled among these peaks. I believe
with Uncle Jake that the stuff is in this valley."
"You see, Uncle Jake," Ross began after a pause, "we have gone on the
supposition that they chose a spot under the cover of rocks or in hollow
trees, some place where the dynamite would be kept dry. Now, it may be
that they have dug a hole in the snow and ice, and buried it in the
open, and the snow has drifted over its grave."
"Maype! maype!" Weimer ejaculated. "Put, if dey haf, our goose, it ist
cooked."
He pushed the box on which he sat back against the wall.
Ross opened the cabin door, and looked out. The weather had grown warmer.
The blanket of clouds which had hovered over the earth for days had
lifted and the snow lay dazzling in the strong light. When he closed
the door, Weimer had donned his blue goggles.
"Where's your big storm, Uncle Jake?" asked Ross.
"Comin', comin'," answered Uncle Jake confidently. "It vill pe on us
py mornin'. Dis light it vill not last."
Ross sat down and took his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.
"Every fall of snow," he thought, "makes our work so much more hopeless."
Presently Weimer broke the silence. "Vell," he began meditatively, "ve
haf t'ings to eat fer de vinter, anyvay," and Ross understood the circle
around which Uncle Jake's thoughts had been winding.
"Yes, it's Meadow Creek for us now, whether the dynamite is found or
not." Ross's voice was grim. "We went over on the trail as far as the
shoulder of Crosby to-day and whew! Uncle Jake, it was a sight to see.
The wind has packed the snow into that trail until it hangs over the
gorge in great masses and curls."
"Looks," added Leslie, "as though a thousand tons or so might sweep down
over the shoulder any minute. The trail is closed all right as far as
I'm concerned. If I hadn't come in the McKenzies' footprints that
morning I wouldn't have come at all."
After dinner the boys fastened on their snow-shoes outside the door and
then looked questioningly at each other.
"Well--where to now?" asked Leslie despondently.
"Sure enough--where?" returned Ross equally despondent.
Weimer had offered no suggestions, and the boys were at the end of their
resources.
"We've hunted every place," said Ross absently, adjusting a buckle on
the strap of his snow-shoe, "except our own premises here."
No sooner had he heard his own voice speaking these careless words than
their possible significance struck him. He sprang up with kindling eyes.
"Less, do you hear?" he shouted, his thoughts in advance of his tongue.
"There's where it may be, and maybe that was the reason why Sandy came
back and looked. Hurry! Hurry up!"
"What are you talking about?" yelled Leslie as Ross raced awkwardly
around the cabin on his snow-shoes.
Weimer opened the door and peered out through his colored goggles. "Has
dot poy gone crazy?" he asked.
Leslie, without pausing to answer, hurried after Ross. "Where to?" he
yelled.
"The tool house," returned Ross over his shoulder. "It's fastened
between two trees, and hangs out over the foot of the dump! See?"
But, instead of taking the trail to the tunnel, Ross struck across the
mounds and hillocks and drifts of snow that blocked the trail leading
to Miners' Camp. Through the tangle of pines and hemlocks he led the
way until he stopped at the foot of the snow-heaped dump and looked up at
the tool house, one side of which rested on the dump, while the opposite
side was fastened to sturdy hemlocks whose trunks arose from the debris
heaped about them from the tunnel. The tool house was now a shapeless
white form, while the dump was buried beneath tons of snow.
"It was here," Ross explained breathlessly, "that Sandy stood. I was
looking out at the McKenzies from a crack up in the house. He came back
and looked up under the house and then grinned and went back to the
others. They had started to leave, you know. Now why did he want to look
under that house?"
"That's it!" cried Leslie with excited conviction. "They had cached the
stuff under the house and he wanted to make sure that their trail could
not be seen. Ross, the sticks are up under there, high and dry."
"You bet!" shouted Ross turning in his tracks. "We'll get shovels and
dig for it. And, Less, if we find the cache, we'll let off one blast
around here outside of the tunnel that 'ill show them, if they're still
over in Camp, that we ain't dead yet."
"Nor dumb and stupid, either!" cried Leslie delightedly as he legged it
rapidly over the snow.
In the door of the shack they found Weimer still standing, shielding his
eyes with one hand and calling questions into space. The boys, appearing,
stopped to answer, not only satisfying the old man but receiving a
valuable suggestion.
"Vat for you dig mit all dot vork? It vill dake you poys a day und a half
to git up unter dot shack. Vy not go in und raise dot floor und find dem
sticks unter?"
Leslie tossed up his cap. "Three cheers for Uncle Jake!" he shouted.
"That's the very thing to do. We'll get around to that signal blast
sooner. Come on, Ross!"
It was Leslie who led this time, axe in hand, while Ross followed with
hammer and shovel. The trail to the tunnel had been unused for days and
was so deeply drifted that the boys had difficulty in getting up to the
dump even with the aid of the shovel. Once on top they were obliged to
shovel their way slowly into the tool house.
"Now," exclaimed Ross when they were fairly in, "now for work with these
floor boards!"
Leslie, with many grunts, fell to clearing away the snow from the floor,
while Ross pulled the big box in which the dynamite had been stored from
the center of the shack into one corner.
"See here, Ross," cried Leslie excitedly as he bent to the last shovelful
of snow. "We don't need axe nor hammer. The McKenzies have done the
work for us. The floor has been taken up and just laid back again
without being spiked down. That box held the planks down pretty firmly,
you see."
The floor consisted of halves of tree trunks, flat above and rounded on
the under side. Eagerly Ross and Leslie raised the central plank and both
cried out simultaneously, for the dynamite filled the space beneath up to
the level of the floor.
"And to think!" muttered Ross, "that I have not thought of this
before--didn't think of it when I saw Sandy peering up here."
Leslie sat back on his heels and mopped his face. "Pretty cute of 'em
to think of a thing like this," he conceded. "I should have taken the
sticks as far away as I could have carried them had I been doing it, and
considered that the farther I went the better for my plans."
"It's Sandy," declared Ross. "Steele has told me a dozen times that
he's the brains of the clan."
It did not take the trio long to restore the dynamite to its box, for
Ross, going down to the cabin, led a delighted Weimer through the
sunshine up to the tool house, and Weimer willingly devoted his great
strength to the task.
"And," insisted Leslie when their task was completed, "now for putting
the shot that shall tell Miners' Camp that we're livelier than ever
over here."
As long as the trail was closed and the McKenzies could not return, the
boys reasoned, it would be a lark to inform them in this way of the
failure of their project.
"Even if they have gone on to Cody," suggested Ross, "Bill Travers might
get the news to 'em by way of the stages."
"But you see," ruefully from Leslie, "probably there's no one except
themselves that knows of our plight. They may not have told any one of
the theft of the sticks."
"Well, we'll set off a blast that will tell every one that they're
found, anyway!" retorted Ross. "And we'll do it in the morning before
the storm comes on," for the brilliancy of the sunlight had long been
dimmed by heavy banks of clouds rolling in from the northwest.
Weimer entered into the project with the abandon of a child, and it was
he who suggested the location of the "shot."
"Nicht on Crosby," he said shaking his head. "Dot might upset dot tunnel.
Put it mit Soapweed Ledge und see vat comes."
The boys did not ask what Weimer meant. Anything they did not understand
they laid to his "Dutch lingo," but they immediately adopted the
suggestion concerning Soapweed Ledge, and in the morning carried
enough sticks across the valley to plant a respectable "mine," as
Ross called it, beneath one of the huge rocks which jutted out from
the side of the mountain that bounded the valley on the north. This
mountain rose four thousand feet above Meadow Creek, its head lost in
the snow clouds that now threatened to submerge the valley. On the
face of the mountain lay a great body of snow, especially heavy above the
timber-line, which here, because of the great elevation of the valley
itself, was only a few hundred feet above the base of any mountain.
Weimer, lured out of the shack by the dimness of the light and the
enjoyment of the undertaking, went with the boys and did his share in the
"packing" of the sticks unurged. It was he who, with an accession of
unusual keenness, planted the charge in a shallow cave with a mass of
rock perilously overhanging the entrance.
"Ve vant ein noise," he chuckled, "ein pig racket. It shall pe heard in
Miners'."
A few moments later they had the noise, all they had planned for, and
then a noise that no one had foreseen save Weimer, and he had not
explained his expectations.
While the long fuse was burning, the three spectators had retreated
to the middle of the valley and faced about expectantly. There came a
fearful detonation which awakened the echoes on every hand and the
vast rock with a dozen of its neighbors was lifted like lumps of clay
and hurled into the valley amid a cloud of snow and ice. Some of the
fragments landed almost at the feet of the spectators.
The echoes had not died away before Weimer, yelling, "Ve may not pe out
of de vay far," turned and made his clumsy but rapid way on snow-shoes
further from the scene of the explosion. The boys were following him
blindly and excitedly when, in the clouds fairly over their heads, came
a sound that neither had ever heard before, a wrenching, grinding,
tearing sound which caused Ross's hair to stir under his cap.
"Can th-that be thunder?" he stammered running.
Weimer looked over his shoulder at the mountain. "You haf neber an
avalanche seen, hein!" he cried, and stopping, faced the other way again.
Down into view below the low hanging clouds it swept its terrible way,
that avalanche which the trembling of the mountain had caused, the work
of the dynamite. With a swift overwhelming rush it crumbled the rocks
and, uprooting great trees, bore them easily on its bosom. Into the
valley it debouched, carrying with it the wreckage from the mountainside.
Ross and Leslie looked at each other with white faces when the roar and
grind and rush finally ceased.
"Suppose," suggested Ross huskily, "we had set that blast off on old
Crosby."
Both boys looked at the mountain overhanging the tunnel above their
shack, and Ross shivered.
"It would have been good-bye to the tunnel and the shack and us too, I
guess," muttered Leslie.
"I told you," declared Weimer, "vat vould happen, hein? I told you last
nicht. Now ein avalanche you haf seen."
Neither boy contradicted his first statement. With the last they agreed
rather breathlessly, for an avalanche they surely had seen!
"I hope," said Ross carelessly as they entered their shack, "that the
McKenzies are still in Miners' and that they heard that blast!"