THE DICK AND LARRY SERIES

BY FRANCIS LYNDE

• THE DONOVAN CHANCE
• DICK AND LARRY, FRESHMEN
• THE GOLDEN SPIDER

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

THE GOLDEN SPIDER

[While they looked, one paused, appeared to dance for an instant, and then disappeared.]

THE DICK AND LARRY SERIES

THE
GOLDEN SPIDER

BY

FRANCIS LYNDE

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1923

Copyright, 1923, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

Published September, 1923

TO MY GOOD FRIEND AND MINERALOGICAL MENTOR, CLARENCE M. CLARK, WITHOUT WHOSE KINDLY HELP, AND THE FREE USE OF HIS LIBRARY, SPECIMEN CABINETS AND LABORATORY, THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN SPIDER MIGHT NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE GOLDEN SPIDER

CHAPTER I
IN LOST CANYON

There wasn’t much suggestion of a canyon, lost or found, in the handsomely furnished office in the Brewster National Bank building where three young fellows in flannel shirts, belted corduroys and hob-nailed lace boots were waiting for the owner of the office to make his appearance.

Of the three, only the middle-sized one, a good-looking chap whose rough outing clothes fitted him as if they were tailor-made, was showing signs of impatience. The biggest of the three, a square-shouldered young athlete with good gray eyes set wide apart, and a shock of dark-red, curly hair, was standing at a window which commanded a magnificent view of the high, forested mountain range lifting the skyline to the westward, while the other member of the trio, an undersized fellow with a thin, eager face and pale blue eyes, was examining the mineral specimens in a corner cabinet.

“Gee! I wish Uncle Billy would come!” said the impatient one, jumping up to make a restless circuit of the room. “We don’t want to miss that train.”

The big fellow turned from his window. “You’re sure he got in last night?” he said.

“Oh, yes; they came in on the Flyer. Aunt Stella called mother over the ’phone after the train got in—just to let us know. But I wish he’d come. We don’t want to lose another single day of this bully weather.”

Dick Maxwell’s impatience was not altogether unreasonable. Ten days earlier Mr. William Starbuck—the “Uncle Billy” in question—had made a short stop in the Middle-Western college town where Dick and his two companions were just winding up their Freshman year, and had asked Dick how he was meaning to spend the long vacation. One thing had brought on another, and the upshot of the talk was an offer on the part of “Uncle Billy” to send Dick, and any two of his college-mates he might pick out, on a summer prospecting trip in the Hophra Mountains, the object in view being the possible discovery, not especially of silver or gold, but more particularly of new sources of supply of the rare metals, tungsten, vanadium, molybdenum, and the like, used in the arts and manufactures.

Dick hadn’t wasted a moment in choosing the first of his companions for the summer outing. Larry Donovan—the big fellow at the office window—son of a crippled locomotive engineer on the home railroad, had been his chum from their grade-school days in Brewster, and the two had spent the preceding summer together as “cubs” on the engineering staff of the railroad of which Dick’s father was the general manager, so Larry was promptly elected as Number Two in the prospecting trip. For the third member they had both picked upon Charles Purdick—Larry’s roommate in college—for several reasons: for one thing, “Little Purdy” was a pretty good plain cook; and for another, he needed the wages that Mr. William Starbuck was going to pay each member of the prospecting party irrespective of the success of the trip in the discovery of any new mineral deposits.

But there was a third reason for Purdick’s invitation which was still stronger. “Purdy,” who, until he became the beneficiary of a certain mysterious scholarship in Old Sheddon, had been working his way through college, was the orphan son of a steel worker, and had grown up in a mill town, under-fed, neglected, kicked about and overworked. He had never been West; had never known what it was to have a real vacation in the open; and both Dick and Larry had decided at once that he was to be Number Three, even if they should have to knock him down and handcuff him to bring him along. But Purdy hadn’t needed any handcuffing.

Larry laughed good-naturedly at Dick’s miserly remark about the wasting of the “bully weather.”

“Don’t you worry about the weather, old scout,” he said. “We’ll take that as it comes, and you know well enough that we’re likely to have a lot more good weather than bad, in the summer months.”

“Oh, I guess yes,” was Dick’s rejoinder. “I’m just sweating to be off to the tall hills, that’s all.” Then to Purdick, who was busily writing in his notebook at the mineral cabinet: “What are you finding over there, Purdy?”

Purdick’s answer was forestalled by the entrance of Dick’s uncle by marriage, a bronzed, upstanding man who looked as if he might be a retired cattle king, and who really had been a range-rider in his younger days.

“Well, well! Here you are!” he said, shaking hands with the three. “Ready to go out and hit the high spots, are you? All right; sit down and we’ll round up the preliminaries—what few there are. Got your dunnage kits made up?”

Dick answered for the three.

“The packs are down at the station. Dad told us what we’d need—and what we wouldn’t need. I guess he hasn’t let us make any tenderfoot mistakes about loading up with a lot of the luxuries.”

“That’s good. Now for my part of it. I’ve wired ahead to Nophi, and Mr. Broadwick, the smelter superintendent, is the man you want to see. He’ll have a couple of burros for you, with your camping outfit and grub packed and ready on the arrival of your train. All you’ll have to do when you get there will be to hike out; take your foot in your hand and go.”

“Right!” said Dick, bubbling over with excitement. And then: “In your letter from New York you said something about maps, Uncle Billy. Have you got them here?”

The “grub-staking” uncle got up and took an envelope of folded maps from a pigeonhole in the office safe.

“Here you are—sections of the Geodetic Survey covering most of the territory where you are going. From Nophi you head up Lost Canyon to Mule-Ear Pass. After you cross the first range, the country is all yours. When, or if, you find any mineral, stake your claims and jot the locations down on the map. Are you carrying a copy of Dana’s ‘System’?”

“Got it in the dunnage,” Dick answered; “it, and a blowpipe field-test outfit. We’ve all been boning the ‘Dana’ for a week, and Mr. Ransom, out at the ‘Little Alice,’ has been showing us how to make tests.”

“Good. The ‘Dana’ will help you in making the simple tests that can be made in the field, and, of course, when you find anything that looks right promising, you’ll bring samples of it back with you for a laboratory assay. That’s about all, I think. If you have a chance to send us word during the summer, do it; but if not, don’t worry, and we won’t. I’m betting confidently that you are all able to take care of yourselves, and of one another. How about arms?”

Again it was Dick Maxwell who answered.

“Dad has made each of us a present of a light Winchester. They’re down at the station with the packs.”

“You probably won’t need the artillery. It’s the closed season for game, but it won’t hurt to have the guns along. If you get tired of carrying them, you can put them in the jack packs.”

Dick was nervously looking at his watch. It still wanted a full half-hour of train time, but we all know how that is when we are about to start out upon a wonderful voyage of discovery.

“Well, Uncle Billy,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to be moving along.” So the handshaking was repeated, and they were heading for the door, when the grub-staking uncle called them back.

“This is rather a humdrum job you’ve undertaken for the summer—looking for the industrial metals,” he said, with a twinkle in the shrewd gray eyes. “I’ve a mind to throw in a bit of romance, just for good measure. How would you like to keep an eye out for a lost gold mine—a real bonanza?”

“A lost gold mine?” Dick queried eagerly. “Who lost it?”

The ex-cowboy uncle was smiling quizzically. “It is a pretty long story, and if you’ve got to hurry to your train——” he began; but Dick cut in quickly.

“Tell us about it, Uncle Billy. We’ll catch the train all right.”

“Think you can take time to listen? I’ll make it short. Three years ago, James Brock, an old prospector whom I knew well, was found at the mouth of Lost Canyon, dying of hunger and exposure. I had him brought down to Brewster and taken to the hospital. He lived only a few days, but during that time he told me his story. He said he had discovered a fabulously rich gold lode in the Little Hophras, and, staying to work it, the winter had caught him. He had been snow-bound for weeks with little or nothing to eat, but had finally made his way out over Mule-Ear Pass, half starved and with his feet and hands frozen.”

“Poor old duffer!” said Dick sympathetically. “But go on, Uncle Billy. What became of the mine?”

“Nobody knows. Brock had no maps, and he couldn’t describe the locality well enough to enable any one to find it. I don’t know how plentiful the ore is, but it is wonderfully rich, as you can see for yourselves,” and from a drawer in his desk he took a small piece of disintegrated quartz, shot through and held together by a wire-like mass of the precious metal.

As one person, the three boys crowded around the desk to examine the beautiful specimen, and none of them heard the office door open or knew that there was an intruder present until Mr. Starbuck suddenly covered the bit of quartz with his hand and said: “Well, my man—what can I do for you?”

As one person again, they all three wheeled and saw the man who had come in so quietly that none of them had heard him. Tramp or beggar, or whatever he was, he seemed to be an object of pity, dirty, unshaven, and a cripple, walking with a crutch and with one leg drawn up in a curiously twisted deformity. And he had a face—as Dick afterward phrased it—that would scare the rats out of a corn bin.

“I’m lookin’ f’r Mister Bradley, th’ employmint man,” was the way the intruder accounted for himself.

Mr. Starbuck shook his head. “Mr. Bradley’s office is on the floor below,” he replied; and at that, the man hobbled out, leaving the door open when he passed into the corridor.

Dick Maxwell was again consulting his watch. “We have a few minutes more, Uncle Billy,” he said hurriedly. “Is that all you can tell us about the lost mine?”

“Not quite all. James Brock told me how he came to discover the vein. He had camped one evening at the foot of a small cliff with a crevice in it. The cliff faced the east, and in the morning he saw that the crevice was curtained with a great wheel of a spider-web, and in the center of the web was an immense spider with a body that looked, with the sun shining on it, as if it were made out of pure gold. Brock took it as an omen. He dug in the crevice and found his mine, which he called ‘The Golden Spider.’ So there is your bit of romance. Find the Golden Spider and maybe you will all come back rich.”

“But if we should find it, it wouldn’t be ours,” put in little Purdick, speaking for the first time.

“I’ll make my right and title over to the three of you,” said the grub-staking uncle, with the quizzical smile again wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. “When old Jimmie Brock found he wasn’t going to live, he made me this little pencil sketch of the place”—taking a folded paper from the drawer which had held the specimen—“and told me to go and take his bonanza for my own—made me his heir, in fact.”

“And you never found it?” Dick asked.

The quizzical smile turned itself into a quiet laugh.

“No. I spent a good month of the following summer looking for it; and after the story got out, others looked for it, too. It has never been found, and probably never will be unless some prospector just happens to stumble upon it accidentally. One mountain is very much like another in the Little Hophras, and Brock couldn’t name his mountain, or describe it so that it could be recognized. You may take his sketch map along with you if you like, though it won’t help you any more than it did me. If I were going to try again, I shouldn’t bother about maps or mountains; I should look for a crack in a cliff, and a golden-bodied spider hanging in its web. Now you see what an excellent chance you have of finding the lost bonanza! But I mustn’t keep you any longer listening to these old fairy tales. Good-by, and good luck to you. Don’t forget to send word back any time you happen to meet anybody coming out of the hills.”

Since the time was now really growing pretty short, the three did not stand upon the order of their going. As they ran through the corridor toward the elevators, they saw the crippled man hobbling along in the same direction, and making as good speed with the long crutch-stride and hop as they did in a dog-trot. That being the case, the cripple caught the same descending elevator that they did; but on the sidewalk they lost him quickly; were a bit astonished to see him climb nimbly into a waiting taxi and get himself whirled away down the avenue.

“Huh!” said Dick, as they hurried along toward the railroad station. “‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ That fellow looks like a beggar, but he rides in a taxi, just the same. I wonder where he is going in such a tearing hurry?”

There was obviously no answer to this, and the incident was presently forgotten in their arrival at the station. The westbound train was in, and both the Maxwell and Donovan families were on hand to see the prospectors off for the summer. Little Purdick, having nobody to see him off, got the packs and rifles and put them aboard, and when he had finished this job the leave-takings were over and the train was pulling out.

“‘Good-by, everybody; good-by, everything!’” Dick sang, hanging out of the last-left-open vestibule; and when he went in to join his two companions he was brimming over with enthusiasm.

“Hey, you old stick-in-the-muds!” he cried. “She’s begun at last—the good old summer out-of-doors! We’re due in Nophi at one o’clock, and to-night we’ll be sleeping out under the stars! Wouldn’t that jar you, Purdy—you old factory-town rat!”

But little Purdick did not answer, because, just at that moment, he had caught sight of a roughly dressed man with a crutch settling himself in a seat at the far end of the day-coach in which they were riding, and the singular prevalence of cripples in this part of the Far West struck him as being so odd that he scarcely heard what Dick was saying.

The two-hour train rush down the Timanyoni, through Little Butte, and up a wide mountain valley to the little smelter town of Nophi, nestling fairly under the shadow of the Greater Hophras, was a journey made without incident—unless dinner in the dining-car, their last civilized meal, as Dick named it, could be called an incident. When the boys left the train they found that a telegram from Brewster had outrun them, and Uncle Billy’s smelter-superintendent friend was at the platform to meet them; also, that the two burros, already packed with the provisions, tools and camping outfit, were waiting under a near-by ore shed.

As they were preparing to start, Mr. Broadwick gave them a hint or two.

“The snow is just breaking up on the main range, and you’ll find the trail for two or three miles each side of Mule-Ear Pass pretty hard to negotiate with the jacks unless you can catch it while it is frozen,” he told them. “Late as it is in the season, it freezes every night on the range, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll push as far up toward the pass as you can this afternoon, camp early, and turn out in the morning early enough to cross the range before the sun gets a melting chance at it. If you don’t do that, you’re likely to have a lot of trouble with the burros. They’re pretty sure-footed little beasts, but they will slip off a thawing trail once in a while.”

Larry was the only one who was thoughtful enough to ask if anybody had been over the trail since the thawing began.

“Yes,” said the smelter superintendent, “two men went over yesterday with supplies for the Little Eagle mine in Dog Gulch. They were experienced packers, and they told us they had to wait for the freeze before they could make it, coming out.”

They promised to do as the superintendent advised, and five minutes later, under a sun that seemed hot enough to make all thoughts of frost and snow troubles a sheer absurdity, they were trailing out the single street of the small smelter settlement and heading for the Lost Canyon portal.

Just as they were leaving the last shacks of the town behind, Purdick, to whom all this wild western stuff was as strange as a glimpse into an entirely different world, happened to look back down the street. What he saw meant nothing to him at first: there were a few stragglers in the street, workmen returning to the smelter after the noon hour, some children playing in the dust, and the usual number of stray dogs foraging for something eatable in the empty tin cans littering the roadway.

But in front of a tar-papered building labeled “Hotel Nophi” three horses were hitched, and as Purdick looked back, three men came out of the hotel to unhitch and mount them. That, in itself, was nothing remarkable, of course, and Purdick wouldn’t have given it a second thought if he hadn’t happened to see, or think he saw, one of the three stick something that looked like a crutch under his saddle leather before he climbed to the back of his riding animal.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he exclaimed, wholly to himself. But when Dick said: “What for?” Purdick’s reply was perfectly non-committal. “Nothing,” he returned, with a laugh. “I guess the altitude’s getting on my eye nerves and making me see double—or triple.”

As he spoke, the street, which had now dwindled to a rocky bridle path, turned sharply to the left and entered the narrow mouth of the canyon; whereupon the brawling stream thundering through the gorge swallowed up all other sounds, even as the cliff-like walls shut out all sights save that of the sky overhead. Nevertheless, as the patient little pack animals plodded steadily on, their tinkling hoofbeats hardly audible above the noise made by the stream, Purdick fancied he could hear heavier hoofbeats clinking upon the stones far to the rear.

That first afternoon’s hike up a canyon trail, which at times scarcely afforded footing for the plodding little beasts under the pack-saddles, came as near to “getting” Purdick as anything he had ever experienced. Having never had time—or the spare energy—to do any athletic work in college, the toiling tramp, with a blanket roll and a gun to carry, made him realize, as he never had before, the handicap of untrained muscles and sinews, and as he dragged along at the tail of the little procession he was chopping out a vow to make the summer outing a turning point for a fellow named Charles Purdick in one respect at least: if hard work and grit would do it, the end of the summer should find him better fitted for man-sized, outdoor work or he’d know the reason why.

Notwithstanding this fine resolution, he heaved a mighty sincere sigh of relief when the five-hour trudge up the canyon came to an end in one of the park-like widenings of the gorge which had been recurring with increasing frequency during the past hour or so, and Dick called to Larry: “Well, old sock; how about it? Isn’t this far enough up so that we can hit the pass in the frosty dawn?”

Larry, who had been leading the foremost burro, stopped and gave the landscape the once over.

“Couldn’t be much better,” he decided. “Plenty of wood, good water, and fir boughs for the shake-downs. Alabama!”

“Huh?” said Dick. “What’s Alabama got to do with it?”

Larry gave a wide-mouthed grin.

“Dig up your U. S. History, sonny. ‘Alabama’ means ‘Here we rest.’ All hands on deck to make camp.”

They went at it like old-timers—or at least two of them did. Though they hadn’t had much to do with the actual camp-making in their railroad construction experience of the summer before, Larry and Dick had learned pretty well how to make themselves at home in the wilderness. While the setting sun—long since gone behind the towering western ranges—was still filling the upper air with a flood of golden radiance, they unpacked the jacks and picketed them to graze on the lush grass of the little park, built the camp-fire, and chopped enough of the fragrant fir tips for the beds.

It was after the fire had burned down to a bed of coals that little Purdick began to shine. Out of the hard experience of his strugglesome boyhood he had brought a pretty good knowledge of plain cooking, and in a little time he dished up a supper that made his two camp-mates pound him on his tired back and bombard him with all sorts of jollying praise.

“We sure got a gilt-edged prize when we picked you off the limb, Purdy,” said Dick warmly. “Whatever else you can’t do, you sure can cook. I see where you’re elected for the whole summer—unless you get your back up and go on strike and make us two poison ourselves with our own skillet messes. Pretty tired after the hike?”

“A little,” Purdick admitted.

“All right; after we get over the Pass, we won’t push it so hard. What say, Larry?”

“There won’t be any need of pushing it,” was Larry’s rejoinder, mumbled through a mouthful of Purdick’s delicious, skillet-baked corn bread. “We’re not out to see how many miles we can do in a day.”

With supper eaten and the tin dishes washed in the crystal-clear stream, and with the last tints of the sun glow gone and the stars coming out in a black bowl of the heavens that seemed almost near enough to reach up and touch, the three rolled themselves in their blankets with their feet to the fire, Dick mumbling something about a day well spent earning a night’s repose, and falling asleep almost as soon as he had stretched himself out.

But little Purdick did not find it quite so simple. For one thing, he was too tired to go to sleep at once, and for another the unfamiliar surroundings, the black shadows of the trees, the hollow drumming of the little river among the boulders in its bed, the high-mountain silence which was otherwise unbroken, the stately procession of the stars in a sky that was like an arch of black velvet—all these things conspired to make him wakeful, and after a time he got up, dug out the mineralogy book from Larry’s pack, stirred the fire to make it give light enough to read by, and was presently deep in the mysteries of sylvanite and sphalerite and chalcopyrite, B.B. tests, acid reactions, and the like.

In a little time he began to realize that even a June night at altitude eight or nine thousand feet can be pretty chilly, so he wrapped himself in his blankets and put his back against a tree. In the new position the firelight wasn’t very good for the reading purpose, and before long he found his eyes growing heavy and finally the “Dana” slipped from his grasp and he was asleep.

This was the last he knew until he awoke with a start some time farther along in the night; came broad awake with a conviction that a noise, other than that of the brawling stream, had broken into the high-mountain silence. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he looked around. The fire had died down to a pile of white-ashed embers, but the starlight, as strong in the clear atmosphere of the heights as modified moonlight, enabled him to see the dim outlines of his surroundings.

While he looked and listened, the noise which had aroused him came again; a measured tapping alternating with the crunch of slow footfalls. Straining his eyes, he soon made out a shadowy figure dodging along from tree to tree and working its way cautiously toward the dying camp-fire.

Purdick’s first impulse was to call Dick and Larry; his next was to half close his eyes and pretend to be still asleep. Nearer and nearer came the tap and shuffle, until at last he was able to get a fair sight of the midnight intruder. It was a man with a crutch, and the watcher under the big fir-tree didn’t have to look twice to decide that his errand wasn’t neighborly. For now the man was down on hands and knees and was crawling up as noiselessly as a snake.

Thinking it over afterward, Purdick could never tell why he didn’t immediately raise an alarm. A yell would have awakened his sleeping camp-mates, and would probably have sent the intruder flying. But instead of flinging off his blanket and shouting to Larry and Dick, little Purdick merely tried to give a better imitation of a sleeping sentinel and let the crippled man come on.

What happened after that was wholly unexplainable to the watcher under the fir-tree. Creeping silently into the diminished circle of firelight, the cripple possessed himself first of Larry’s pack and then of Dick’s, going through them rapidly but painstakingly, as if in search of something. Next, Purdick saw his own pack going through the same process. Like a suddenly illuminating flash of lightning, the explanation blazed into Purdick’s brain. The cripple was the man who had come into Mr. Starbuck’s office just as they were about to leave. He had overheard the talk of the Golden Spider, the lost gold mine, and he was searching for old Jimmie Brock’s map!

CHAPTER II
THE FROZEN TRAIL

When Purdick realized that the rummaging cripple was not only a camp thief, but most probably a desperado of sorts, he saw where he had made a capital mistake in not arousing his two companions while it could have been done with safety. It was too late now. The man was within arm’s reach of the two sleeping figures, and he was armed; at least, he was using a vicious-looking hunting-knife to cut the pack lashings.

Purdick held his breath. The little pencil sketch made by the old prospector had been put into the envelope containing the Survey maps; and the envelope, as Purdick knew, had been placed between the leaves of the mineralogy book for safe-keeping and carriage. The book was lying beside him, just where it had slipped out of his hands when he had fallen asleep. Would the thief see the book and look in it?

It seemed useless to hope that he wouldn’t. With the curious perversity with which inanimate things appear to be endowed at times, the camp-fire blazed up and a resiny twig made a candle of itself, illuminating the camp area like a small searchlight. Purdick made sure that the crippled scoundrel couldn’t miss seeing the book lying in plain sight; the book and the end of the map-holding envelope sticking out of it; and again he held his breath.

That, in itself, was unnerving enough, but the sight he got of the cripple’s face was even more so. He hadn’t noticed the man’s face particularly when the cripple had hobbled into and out of Mr. Starbuck’s office in Brewster, but now he saw that it was a perfect mask of sly and ferocious villainy, and he had a swift and terrifying conviction that the thief would use his knife murderously if any of his victims showed signs of awakening.

With that conviction half paralyzing him, Purdick’s heart fairly stopped beating when he saw Dick Maxwell stretch his arms over his head and yawn as if he were about to wake up. Instantly the man quit rummaging and caught up his knife. Little Purdick had never felt so helpless in all his life. In propping himself against the tree he had wrapped his blankets around him so tightly that he couldn’t get out of them without a struggle. None the less, he was drawing his feet up to be ready for the struggle when Dick rolled over on his side, gave a snort, and was apparently fast asleep again. The peril was over, for the moment, at least, and Purdick’s stopped heart began to thump furiously, hammering so hard that he wondered why the thief didn’t hear it and spring at him.

In the reaction which was bound to follow a shock like that, Purdick closed his eyes, and tried vainly for a few moments to fight down the sickening dizziness that was threatening to blot him out. When he looked again, the man had seemingly given up the search for the map. Cautiously, with his knife between his teeth, and one arm thrust through his crutch to drag it along, he was gathering up the three rifles and making off with them.

Once more little Purdick fought down a frantic impulse to yell out to the two sleepers. Without the guns they would be helpless. But he knew that the cripple wasn’t alone in the canyon; that somewhere, and probably near at hand, were the two men who had ridden out of Nophi with him. It was only the thought that the other two might be near enough to hear his yell and open fire on the camp that enabled Purdick to keep still at this crisis. But he had to bite his tongue to do it.

While the crippled marauder was crawling away, dragging the three guns and his crutch, and making hard work of it, Purdick’s resolve was swiftly taken. Noiselessly he disentangled himself from the impeding blankets, never losing sight for an instant of the crawling figure working its way toward the lower narrowing of the park-like opening. Never had the little fellow so bitterly resented the fate that had made him undersized and, in a certain sense, a physical weakling. With Larry’s strength, or even Dick’s, he could have landed upon the back of the creeping thief and made him drop the rifles.

He had just about made up his mind to try it, anyhow, when a diversion came. Seen dimly by the flickering light of the blazing twig, the cripple was stopping beside a great boulder which had some time fallen from the cliffs on the opposite side of the little river and rolled across to the intervale level. Little Purdick prayed for a better light, and got it—just for an illuminating instant; just long enough to let him see that the man was poking the three guns under an overhanging lip of the great rock to hide them.

This was better; much better; and as the departing thief lifted himself upon his one serviceable foot and his crutch to continue on his way down the canyon, Purdick darted quickly into the shadow of the firs and prepared to follow.

The pursuit did not take him very far. Less than a quarter of a mile below the camp site there was another opening in the canyon, with a little side gulch leading off to the left. In the mouth of this gulch Purdick saw the glow of a camp-fire, and he could dimly make out the figures of two men sitting beside it. While he looked, the cripple hobbled down the trail ahead of him and joined the two at the fire. Here, so Purdick determined, was his chance to find out what the desperadoes purposed doing, so he called up all the Indian-stalking stories he had ever read and crept down upon the camp in the gulch.

Luckily, he didn’t have to be Indian-silent in making his approach. Woodcraft was only a dictionary word to him, as yet, and twigs would snap and stones roll under his feet, in spite of all he could do. But the brawling stream, along the edge of which he was making his way, swallowed up all the clumsy noises, and in a few minutes he had climbed to a little thicket of low-growing fir saplings on the gulch side, from the shelter of which he could both see and hear, and could look down at a sharp angle into the very heart of the small camp-fire and upon the men surrounding it.

As he came within listening range, the crippled spy was just finishing his report.

“No, I didn’t find th’ map; I just took a chance at that,” he was saying. “One o’ them’s likely got it in his pocket. What I wanted was the guns, an’ I got ’em. Not that a bunch o’ boys like them would put up a fight; but without th’ artillery, they can’t, d’ye see?”

“Why didn’t yuh bring the guns in with yuh?” growled the bigger of the two who hadn’t left the camp-fire.

“Too much trouble. I hid ’em where they’ll never find ’em.”

“Well,” said the big man, “do we go on up and scare the kids out of a year’s growth? Are you sure they’ve got the map? It was talked around in Nophi that they was goin’ out hunting f’r tungsten, an’ the like o’ that.”

“Didn’t I see it with my own eyes?” snapped the cripple. “An’ didn’t I hear Starbuck tellin’ ’em all about th’ Golden Spider? ’Tis a sure thing, I tell you! This tungsten business is all a frame-up. Starbuck’s got a safe pointer on that gold mine, and he’s sendin’ the boys because he figures that nobody’d think a bunch o’ college boys’d be out for anything but a good time in th’ big hills.”

“Well,” said the smaller of the two fire-keepers, “this is your show, Twisty. What do you say?”

“There’s only one thing to say. If we could get over Mule-Ear with th’ bronc’s, I’d say, let ’em go on ahead an’ find th’ mine f’r us. But th’ horses can’t make the trail, an’ it thawin’ an’ freezin’ every day, though the jacks can. We’ll wait f’r an hour ’r so, till the trail’s froze good an’ hard, then we’ll go up an’ get th’ map an’ the jacks and their outfit and grub-stake an’ go on.”

“Leavin’ the kids behind, yuh mean?” said the big man.

“Surest thing you know!” barked the cripple. “They’ll find their way back to Nophi, an’ that’ll be the end of it.”

“But if we leave the horses, that’ll give us away,” objected the third robber.

“I fixed that before we left Nophi,” said the man with a crutch. “Barkey Davis’ll be on his way up the canyon at daybreak, and if he finds the bronc’s left behind, he’ll take ’em back. If he don’t find ’em, he’ll know we’ve gone on. ’Tis all fixed.”

But the third man was still unsatisfied. “We’re too near the town,” he said. “I know Billy Starbuck, and so do you. Th’ boys’ll get back to Nophi in a day, and that’ll mean a sheriff’s posse, with Starbuck headin’ it. It’s too risky.”

“Risky nothing!” was the snapping retort. “’Tis you with a yellow streak in you, Tom Dowling! How’s thim b’ys goin’ to know who holds ’em up in the dark? An’ with th’ snow thawin’ every day on the range, who’s goin’ to trail us over Mule-Ear?” And the cripple spat in the fire to emphasize his disgust.

Little Purdick had heard enough, and more than enough. In an hour, more or less, their camp would be raided, everything they had would be taken away from them, and they would be set afoot in the wilderness to make their way back to civilization as best they might. Stealthily he began to back out of his hiding place under the low-growing saplings. Flight, a swift race back to Dick and Larry with the tremendous news, was the next number on the programme.

Before he could give himself the first backing shove, Purdick found that he was shaking with nervousness, and he had to wait for a minute or two until he could get the trembling fit under control. The little pause came near proving hideously disastrous. In moving back he had disturbed a round stone the size of a man’s head, and before he could grab at it, it had gotten away and was rolling down the declivity. When it started, Purdick thought it was all over with him; the stone was headed straight for the fire in the gulch. But in its second turn-over it struck one of the small trees, was turned aside and went plunging down the other declivity into the stream at the right.

Purdick flattened himself to the earth until he had a feeling that he was no thicker than a sheet of paper, and he hardly dared to breathe. Two of the three men at the fire—the two with sound legs—sprang up at the noise of the plunge, but the cripple sat still and laughed raucously.

“Youse fellies ain’t got the nerve of a couple o’ jack-rabbits!” he sneered. “Did yuh think th’ little sleepin’ b’ys was comin’ down here to scrag us? ’Twas only a rock rollin’ round in the creek.”

Purdick had his shaking fit well in hand by this time, and once more he started to back away, testing every rock as he retreated to the stream level to make sure that it was fastened down before he put his weight upon it. Once on the trail, and around the first crook in the canyon, he began to run at top speed—and kept that up for just about twenty yards—which was all the distance it took to make him understand that when a fellow has lived all his life at an altitude of a few hundred feet above sea-level, he can’t run to do any good in the tall hills; at least, not until his lungs have grown big enough to take in more of the rarefied air at a gulp.

So it was a pretty badly winded scout who presently staggered into the upper camp opening and flung himself upon his two soundly sleeping comrades. Of the two, Larry came broad awake at the first alarm, but Dick had to be shaken vigorously before he could be made to sit up and listen to the story that Purdick was gasping out.

“Well, I’ll be dinged!—you good old sleuth!” was Dick’s praiseful comment, after Purdick had made them understand what had been happening while they slept. “Played ’possum and didn’t let him know you were awake? But why didn’t you yell out for us?”

“I meant to, at first, of course,” said Purdick. “But I waited too long. When he got up right here between you two with that butcher knife, I was afraid to. What are we going to do? They said they’d wait an hour or so, but they’re liable to change their minds and rush us any minute.”

Larry Donovan was the one who knew what was to be done, and he was already doing part of it. Quickly throwing a handful of twigs upon the fire to make a better light, he began to roll his blankets and to gather up the scattered contents of his pack.

“Get busy, fellows,” he said quietly. “If you’ve got it straight, Purdy, we may have all the time we need to get out of here—or we may not have.”

“Gee!” gasped Dick, falling upon his own preparations with a rush; “you mean that we’ve got to tackle the Mule-Ear trail in the dark?”

“It’s that, or a stand-up fight with these plug-uglies,” Larry returned coolly. “Knowing what we do, I suppose we’d be justified in ambushing the gang as they come up the canyon, but I’m sure none of us want to start this summer job of ours by shooting down a bunch of mine-robbers, much as they deserve it. The other thing to do is to light out before they get to us. And we don’t have to do it in the dark either; see there?” and he pointed to a thin crescent of a moon in its last quarter which was just beginning to show itself above the high eastern mountain. Then to Purdick, “Purdy, you go and corral those guns, while I make up your pack.”

Going over it afterward, all three of the boys thought they were well within the truth in claiming that no camp was ever broken with less loss of time, even by trained burro-freighters, than theirs was that night. In a very few minutes the jack-loads were made up and cinched on the pack saddles, each man’s shoulder-pack was slung, and they were ready for the trail.

Larry, dropping into place as leader in the flight, gave his final directions after Dick had brought a hatful of water from the stream with which to extinguish the camp-fire.

“I was studying the Survey map as we came up on the train, and if I’ve got the right idea of where we are now, we have a pretty long, hard pull ahead of us to reach the top of the pass. We must make the best time we can while the going is good, because we can’t rush much after we hit the old snow. We’ll let old Fishbait”—they had already named the two burros—“show us the way. He can find the trail better than we can. All set? Here we go, then.”

Happily, the up-canyon trail was easy at the start. Beyond the little park in which their camp had been pitched there were a few narrow places where the footing at the stream side was somewhat hazardous, with only the thin moonlight to show them where it was; but very shortly the gorge widened out into a valley with precipitous, wooded mountain slopes on either side. Here the trail was broad enough to enable them to break the Indian-file order of march; and Dick and Larry made Purdick repeat his overhearings at the camp of the desperadoes.

“Wait a minute,” Dick interrupted; “let’s see if I’m getting it straight. Were they meaning to leave the horses behind when they came up to raid us?”

“That’s the way I understood it,” said Purdick.

“Then when they do come up and find us gone, they’ll have to go back after the horses before they can follow us.”

“Which is lucky for us,” Larry put in. “As long as the trail stays as good as it is right along here, they can cover three miles to our one. How far did you say it was from our camp back to theirs, Purdy?”

“I’m no good at guessing distances in a crooked canyon in the dark,” Purdick admitted. “But it can’t be over a short quarter of a mile.”

“Not much comfort in that,” Larry grumbled. “Did you see the horses?”

“No; but I couldn’t see much of anything. Their fire was built in a little side gulch and it didn’t shine out into the main canyon, and the moon wasn’t up, then.”

“Our best hope is that they’re not hurrying about putting the raiding job over,” was Dick’s contribution to the discussion. “If they’ll only give us time to reach the bad going——”

The interruption was the distant crack of a rifle, a single shot that repeated itself in a series of battledore and shuttlecock echoes from the mountain sides on either hand.

“What does that mean?” Dick demanded.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Larry. “But if you ask me, I’ll say it’s a signal. Just for a try at it, suppose two of them have come up to put the raiding job over. They’ve found the birds flown, and now they’re telling the third man to come on with the horses. Am I right?”

“I believe you are as right as rain,” Dick agreed quickly. “In which case?——”

“In which case, it’s us for the speedway!” Larry exclaimed, and forthwith he urged the little pack animals into their nearest approach to a trot.

“If we can’t beat that bunch to the bad going, it’s up to us to make a fight or get ready to tramp back to Nophi with our tongues hanging out. Get along, Fishbait! If you only had sense enough to know what’s behind you, you’d make tracks a lot faster than you’re making them now!”

That was the beginning of a blind race which was made all the more difficult by the fact that the fugitives never knew a minute ahead what they were coming to next. If they had been familiar with the trail it would have been different. But they had to trust wholly to the instinct of the leading burro, and at times, when the little beast and its pack mate went plunging through dense thickets of the young trees, they were reasonably sure they were off the track.

Also, in a very short while the pace began to tell, particularly upon little Purdick. By the time they reached muddy going, the high, upper valley where patches of the old snow were showing dimly among the tree trunks, with leaky rivulets trickling down from them to make a spongy swamp of the footway, Purdick was gasping for breath and lagging behind the procession, in spite of all his efforts to keep up.

“Getting next to you, old scout?” said Larry, leaving Dick to urge the pack beasts on while he dropped back to relieve Purdick of the weight of his gun. “This is a pretty hard row of stumps to put you into—the first crack out of the box, this way.”

“I’m—I’m all right,” the small one stammered gamely. “If I—if I could only—could only get my second wind——”

“That’s it,” said Larry encouragingly. “It’ll come, after a bit. But if it’s too hard for you, we’ll let up a few notches. Dick and I are more or less used to these altitudes, and——”

“L-l-let up, nothing!” stuttered the game laggard. “Wh-when I can’t hold up my end you can ch-chuck me into the creek and leave me behind!”

It was the trail itself that presently cut the speed down to something less breathless. Within the next five hundred yards the spongy swamp underfoot had become snowy slush, and with another hundred feet or so of elevation the slush began to crunch encouragingly under their feet to tell them that they were at least reaching the zone of nightly frosts.

Here, too, the forests were receding on the approach to timber line, with steep, snow-covered slopes to take their place, and in consequence, the light was immeasurably better; so good, indeed, that they could now see the trail quite plainly, part of the time as a deeply trodden path between snowbanks, and in other places a hard-frozen ridge from which the snow, thawing in the June sun, had sunk away.

It was remarkable how the sure-footed little pack animals were able to climb steadily, rarely slipping on the icy track, and plodding along at a walk so fast that it pushed the three boys to keep up with them on the slippery ascent. It was Dick, who had made one winter trip into the mountains a couple of years earlier, who cautioned his companions about the danger of slipping from the trail.

“Look out in these ridgy places,” he warned. “If you slip aside, you’re a goner; just as likely as not you’ll drop into a drift twenty feet deep. I did that little thing once, and——”

Before he could tie anything to the “and,” there was a shout from the rear, and the place in the trail which had lately been occupied by little Purdick was vacant.

“Hold up, Larry!—Purdy’s taken a dive!” Dick yelled, and the procession was halted. On the lower side of the trail, at the spot where Purdick had been last seen, there was a round hole in the snow crust. It was neither as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but, like Mercutio’s wound, it served. Down in the bottom of it a disturbance, much like that in the pit of an ant-lion when that active little bug is burrowing with its prey, was going on to an accompaniment of smothered cries.

“Don’t fight yourself to death!” Dick called out. “We’ll get you in a minute.” Then to Larry: “Grab me by the feet—I’m going after him”—which he did, head foremost, to be dragged back a moment later, bringing the buried one with him.

“B-r-r-r!” shivered little Purdick, beating the snow out of his clothes; “if anybody had ever told me that I was scheduled to take a snow bath in June—whoosh! it’s all down inside of me!”

“It’ll melt in a little while,” said Dick consolingly. “I’ve been there, too, and I know how it feels. But we’d better be humping ourselves. If I’m not mightily mistaken I can hear those horses coming up the canyon trail right now! Listen!”

They did listen, and there was no reason to doubt Dick’s acuteness of hearing. Far back along the way they had come they could hear the clink of horseshoes upon stone; and the horses were evidently being pushed to their best up-hill speed.

“It’s still up to us,” said Larry. “If we can turn that high gulch shoulder up ahead before they get out of the timber.... I don’t know whether they’d go so far as to try to murder us, but as long as we’re out on the bare snow slope we make a pretty plain target, in this moonlight.”

That meant more haste, combined with a good bit of uncertainty as to the result. The trail had now become a winding zigzag up the snow-covered slope, and until it turned to head into one of the higher gulches, any object upon it as big as three marching figures and two loaded pack animals would stick out like a sore thumb against the white background from any lower point of view at the edge of timber line. So the question of escape hung once more upon the matter of speed. If they could disappear in the gulch before the pursuers reached the foot of the snow slope, the worst would be over.

They made it, finally, though by the narrowest possible margin. Just after they had urged the blown burros around the projecting rocky shoulder which hid them, the three panting climbers turned to look back. Down at the edge of the timber, fully five hundred feet below, they saw three mounted men push out upon the lower reaches of the trail. Larry shifted his rifle from his shoulder to the crook of his arm.

“They’re going to try it, anyway,” he said slowly. “If their horses are sharp-shod, they may be able to make it. I don’t know but what it’s going to come to a fight, after all.”

Contrary to everything Larry had ever known of him, Dick Maxwell was the one who counseled patience and a renewed effort to escape.

“I’d hate to see it come to gun-play,” he said. “It would be a pretty savage way to start our summer. Let’s not fight until we have to, anyway, Larry.”

But Larry Donovan was made of somewhat grimmer stuff.

“Goodness knows, I don’t want to kill anybody,” he protested. “But there’s this much about it, and I’m saying it to both of you. These wolves mean business. They think they’re on the sure trail of a gold mine, and we know what we may expect if they overtake us. If they can make the trail on horseback, as they are trying to, right now, it is only a question of a little time until they’ll chase us into a corner.”

“Well?” queried Dick. “What have you got up your sleeve?”

“This. As long as we’re climbing the hill, we’ve got the advantage. We’ll make the pass if we can, and take cover, if we can find any. I don’t want to kill a man, any more than you do, but if they are still trying to get at us, we’ll have to take a crack at the horses, in sheer self-defense.”

That was the way it was left when they resumed their march along the frozen trail whose windings presently led them so far around the mountain that they lost sight of the snow slope over which they had climbed to reach the high gulch. Before they had headed the gulch to come out upon the bare, wind-stripped slope over which the trail doubled back toward the pass, the crescent moon which had thus far lighted them upon their way began to pale in the first flush of the coming dawn. Just ahead they could see the comparatively shallow depression in the mountain range which marked their goal, and in a few minutes more the toiling ascent was accomplished and they stood on the bald summit of the pass.

It was this last ascent that gave them the elevated view-point from which they could trace the backward windings of the trail almost all the way down to the place where it emerged from the timber. In the increasing dawn light they could make out, far below them, the three horsemen like black insects crawling along on the snow sheet. [While they looked, one] of the insects [paused, appeared to dance for an instant, and then disappeared], and they knew that one of the horses had slipped from the icy trail to plunge aside into a snowdrift.

“That ought to settle them,” said little Purdick, making a pair of shades out of his curved hands to shut out the snow glare, as he watched the struggle going on below. “They’ve still got the worst of it ahead of them, if they only knew it.”

For a few minutes the three watchers stood motionless, looking on at the efforts of the two men who remained on the trail to get their submerged comrade out of the drift. When the thing was finally accomplished it was at the cost of the loss of a horse. Quite plainly they saw the freed and plunging animal break its way out of the drift and paw its way up to the surface of hard-frozen crust, only to lose its footing and go whirling and sliding down the steep, mile-long toboggan slide of the slope below, growing smaller and smaller until at last it disappeared entirely.

Dick Maxwell took off his hat and waved it as the three men on the trail, leading the two remaining horses, turned and began to creep back down the path of hazard which had proved so nearly fatal to at least one of them.

“Good-by, you hold-ups!” he shouted, as if he could make himself heard over the half-mile or more of intervening height and distance. “Sorry you’ve lost your nerve, but we’re mighty glad to see the last of you, just the same. Good-by!”

“Don’t you be too sure about having seen the last of them,” Larry put in soberly. “If they really believe we can show them the way to the Golden Spider, and so give them a chance to ‘jump’ it, they’ll not give up so easily. You must remember that the summer is still young.”

“Summer?” said Dick, with a shiver; “it seems as if it might be Christmas up here with all this snow.” Then to Purdick, who was untying the cooking utensils hanging from Fishbait’s pack saddle: “What’s on your mind, Purdy?”

“Coffee,” said Purdick. “I feel as if I’d been up all night. Which pack was the solidified alcohol put in?”

Nobody remembered, so there had to be a search made in both jack packs, since there was no fuel of any sort on the high, wind-swept barren of the pass. The emergency cartridges were found, after a time, and Purdick rigged the tripod of the alcohol stove and put a cookerful of clean snow on to melt. That done, he began rummaging in the packs again, methodically at first, but a little later with feverish haste.

“Tell us what you’re looking for and maybe we can help you find it,” said Larry, coming back from a short excursion to the western side of the pass where he had been giving the downward trail the once over.

“The book,” Purdick answered gaspingly; “the ‘Dana’ with the maps in it! Which one of you put it away?”

“I haven’t seen it since we left Nophi,” was Larry’s rejoinder; and Dick also pleaded an alibi.

Purdick sank back on his heels and his face was white.

“Didn’t—didn’t either one of you pick it up last night at the canyon camp and put it in one of the packs?” he demanded.

“Pick it up? From where?” Dick asked.

“Off the ground. I sat up, reading in it, after you fellows had turned in, and when I dropped asleep it fell out of my hands. It was lying there beside me while that cripple was going through the packs, and I was scared stiff for fear he’d see it and see the map envelope sticking out of it. After that, I never thought of it once until this minute. It’s gone, and it’s all my fault! I told you two you were loading yourselves up with a hoodoo in bringing me along, and this proves it. We can’t make a single test without the ‘Dana,’ or locate anything without the Government maps. Worse than all, those hold-ups will probably find the book on their way back through the canyon, and that’ll end it!”

CHAPTER III
IN WHICH DICK DROPS OUT

Consternation was about the only word that fitted when Purdick had told the tale of the lost book. What he had said was perfectly true. Though they were all three taking engineering courses in college, no one of them knew enough about mineralogy as a science to do any practical prospecting for metals without a text-book. Besides, there were the Government maps; lacking them, they could never locate a claim, so as to be able to tell where it was situated, even if they should be lucky enough to find one.

At the moment, none of them thought much of the loss of James Brock’s little sketch map of the Golden Spider. Uncle Billy Starbuck’s evident conviction that the lost mine would never be found unless it was by pure accident had its effect; and, anyway, the real business of the summer was to be a search for the baser, though not less valuable, metals. And unless they could determine the presence of these—as they couldn’t hope to without the help of the “Dana,” there was no use in going on.

“Well,” said Dick, drawing a long breath, “that fixes us, good and plenty. I guess it’s us for a hike back to Nophi, and a wait until we can wire for another copy of the book and another set of the Survey maps.”

Larry shook his head.

“It’s likely to be a good, long wait. That copy of the ‘Dana’ was the only one to be found in Brewster—so the man that sold it to me said; and the maps will probably have to come from Washington.”

It was here that little Purdick had his say.

“This crazy break is on me and nobody else,” he cut in. “I had no business to forget the book when we were packing up last night. If you fellows will wait here for me, I’ll go back after it.”

“A lot of good that would do!” said Dick. “Those three hold-ups will be on the trail ahead of you, and you can bet they won’t miss finding the book in daylight, if they did overlook it last night.”

“I know,” Purdick went on, “but it’s up to me to try it, just the same. I deserve all that’s coming to me.”

At this, both of the others protested vigorously. There was little chance that the returning desperadoes wouldn’t find the book as they passed the camp site; and Larry and Dick both urged, with a good deal of truth, that Purdick was too “soft” to tackle the job; unfit, and too unused to roughing it in the open. Purdick let them go on until they had talked themselves out, but he wouldn’t give up.

“What you say is so true that it hurts,” he came back. “All the same, I’m going. I made the break, and it’s my job to patch it up, if I can. All I want to know is whether you’ll wait for me here, or at the foot of the pass on the other side.”

Dick and Larry exchanged glances. One of Purdick’s outstanding qualities—the one by which he was best known in Old Sheddon—was a certain patient, gamey obstinacy that never knew when it was beaten. They knew that if he had made up his mind to do penance for his neglect by going back, he’d go, no matter what they might say.

Larry took the bull, or rather the dilemma, by the horns.

“It isn’t all on you, Purdy. I sent you down to the big rock last night to get the guns, and told you I’d make up your pack. So we can split the blame.” Then to Dick: “Think you could navigate these mules of ours down the western trail alone?”

“Sure I can,” Dick asserted.

“All right,” Larry went on; “I’ve got a scheme. As I told you, I soaked up good and plenty on those Survey maps yesterday, and I believe I can find a shorter way back to the canyon than the one the regular trail takes around that long loop at the head of the valley. Hustle us a quick bite of breakfast, Purdy, and I’ll go along with you. There’s just about one chance in a hundred that we may be able to beat those hold-ups to it.”

Purdick demurred a little to this, still insisting that the fault was his and that he ought to pay the penalty alone. But he did not let his objections delay things. The water was boiling, and with the pot of coffee made, a few slices of bacon fried over the alcohol blaze, and a box of biscuits opened, they bolted a hasty breakfast. With the draining of the coffee pot the plan of action was outlined.

Since there was no feed for the burros on the barren pass, Larry’s suggestion that Dick go on down the western slope with the pack animals had to be accepted, so it was arranged that he was to push on, stopping to wait for Larry and Purdick to catch up when he should reach the first good grazing ground for the jacks.

“We ought to be able to overtake you by to-night, or early to-morrow morning, at the latest,” Larry said, “but if we don’t show up as soon as you think we ought to, don’t worry. We’ll do the best we can, and we’re going to travel mighty light.” And to prove it he discarded shoulder pack, rifle and ammunition, taking only a small camp axe for equipment, while Purdick took provisions enough for two meals in a light haversack, and nothing else.

“There’s only one thing the matter with this lay-out of ours,” Dick said, as his companions were preparing to leave him. “Suppose you don’t find the book where Purdy dropped it—what then?”

That was a sort of an impasse to give them pause, as the old writers used to say. If they shouldn’t find the book, they would be worse off than ever. But Larry Donovan was of the breed of those who cross bridges when they come to them—and not before.

“We’ve got to take a chance on that;” he said quickly. “You can’t keep the jacks here all day with nothing to eat; they’ve got to either go on or go back. We’ll be with you again by to-morrow morning, book or no book. And then, if we haven’t got what we went after, we can decide what is best to do. Come on, Purdy. We’re losing precious time.”

The start was made without more ado, but instead of taking the trail over which they had reached the pass, Larry led the way around the sloping shoulder of the northern peak, kicking himself footholds in the frozen snow crust, and thereby taking long chances, as he well knew, of breaking through into some bottomless drift.

“Step light and walk in my tracks, and for Pat’s sake don’t slip!” he called back to Purdick; but the caution was hardly needed. Purdick still had a vivid mental picture of the freed horse of the hold-ups whirling and slipping and shooting down to oblivion over the skating-rink surface of the snow slope, and he was all claws to clutch and hang as he followed Larry around the steepest part of the shoulder.

Past the steep shoulder they came out upon what the Alpine climbers called an arrêté; a ridge sloping gently down and roughly paralleling the main range on their left and Lost Canyon on the right and far below. This ridge was what Larry had been aiming for. Its rocky crest had been blown clear of the winter snows; it was taking them in the right direction; there was good footing; and the descent was rapid enough to let them take a dog-trot without cutting their wind too severely.

“Don’t let me wear you out,” Larry cautioned; “but here’s where we’ve got to make time, if we’re going to beat those plug-uglies back to our camp site in the canyon. Are you good for the dog-trot?”

“Plenty good, so long as it’s down-hill,” panted the runner-up. “But I don’t see where we’re making anything. We can never get down to the canyon off of this thing.”

“Wait,” Larry flung back, “and I’ll show you.”

From the top of the high ridge they could get occasional glimpses of the trail winding down the deep valley to the canyon head, and one of these glimpses gave them a sight of the baffled hold-ups making their way slowly along the slippery path, two riding and one walking; mere black dots they were, visible only because the dazzling white surroundings made them so.

“We’re breaking even with ’em!” said Larry, lengthening the stride of the dog-trot by imperceptible degrees. “They’ve got a good mile of the snow trail to crawl over yet, and then another mile of the slush and mud. I believe we’re going to make it, after all.”

“Yes; but we’re a mile above the canyon, and this ridge will never take us down to it!” Purdick gasped out.

“Wait, and you’ll see,” was all Larry would say; but as he ran he was studying the lay of the land harder than he had ever boned Math. in the college year which had just ended. Far down the ridge little patches of dark green showed where a straggling vanguard of the firs had pushed its way a full half-mile above the normal timber, and it was toward the scattering and stunted trees that he was directing their flight.

“If you can manage to hold out until we get to those trees,” he called back to the lagging runner-up. “Think you can do it?”

Little Purdick didn’t stop to think; he was putting the whole battery of mind and will upon the business of keeping his legs waggling. Long before the tree patches were reached, those legs had become base deserters from the animal kingdom and had gone over bodily to the vegetable. Pumping for breath like a spent miler on a cinder path, Purdick could fancy that his legs were mere blocks of wood hung in some mysterious manner to his body by hinges that were sadly in need of oiling. But, just the same, they continued to waggle. That was the main thing.

None the less, when the race for Larry’s goal was won, Purdick was done, finished, écrasé, as our French friends would put it. Dropping down upon the snow crust, he could do nothing but gasp and groan, not so much from sheer exhaustion as in bitterness of heart because he had such scanty reserves of strength and endurance.

“That’s right; take it easy,” said Larry, whipping the short-handled axe from his belt. “This next shift is a one-man job.” And as he spoke he attacked first one and then another of the stunted trees with the axe and hacked them down in a few handy blows. “There are the toboggans,” he jerked out; “now for the brakes,” and in a few minutes more he had two smaller trees down and trimmed to bare sticks with stubby branches left at the butts and the stubs sharpened to points.

Purdick sat up, rubbing the calves of his legs.

“Great Peter!” he exclaimed; “do you mean that we’re going to slide down on those trees?”

Larry chuckled.

“You’re one fine little guesser, Purdy; I’ll say that much for you. I’ll bet you haven’t had a sled ride since you were a little kid, but you’re going to have one now—the kind that you’ll talk about after you get old and toothless and take your youngest grandchild on your knee to tell it what a daring little old rooster you used to be in your younger days.”

“But, for mercy’s sake, Larry!—it’s a mile down to that timber, and it looks like ten! When we hit those big trees——”

“I know; you’ll say there won’t be anything left of us. But we’ll have to risk something if we want to beat those fellows on the trail. It’s our only chance. And I’m betting largely upon these brake sticks. You take the stick under your arm, so, and lean back hard on it if you find yourself going too fast. The sun’s getting a little work in on the crust now, and I’m hoping that these stubby branches will cut in deep enough to do the braking act.”

“I’m still game,” said Purdick, getting up like an old, old man and helping Larry to swing the cut-down trees into position with the butts pointing down the steep slope. And then, as one who knows he has to be slain and wishes to have it over with: “Let me go first, and you can come along afterwards and gather up the remains.”

“Nothing like it,” said Larry firmly. “I’ve done this thing before, and you haven’t. You watch me go, and then do exactly as I do.” And with that, he straddled his tree, took the steering stick under his arm and shoved off.

Little Purdick had held his breath so many times during the past twenty-four hours that he did it now quite automatically. To his town-bred notion, Larry was simply committing suicide, or so it seemed as the big bunch of evergreen, with Larry riding it, hurled itself down the first steep declivity, utterly out of control—it appeared; and it was not until the tree and its rider were a mere flying dot in the lower distance that Purdick could summon the nerve to mount his own vehicle and push it off.

Of what happened to him in the next sixty seconds or so he never had a very clear picture. There was no working up to speed; no interval in which to grow up to the crowding sensations of the thing. With a slithering hiss the makeshift sled was off, and at the first downward dash the brake stick caught in the crust, ripped a furrow apparently a mile long, and was then torn out of his grasp. With nothing to lean on, Purdick whirled over on his face and took a death grip on the branches of the tree, burying his arms to the shoulders in the foliage. In the one brief glimpse he had of the backward rushing steep he saw great slabs of the snow crust, torn up by the hooking brake stick, following him down in a cataracting procession; the next thing he knew there was a crash as if a blast had gone off under him, and Larry was stooping over him, laughing and trying to break that grim death-hold of the clamping arms.

“Let go, you old cockleburr!” he chuckled. “You can’t take that tree with you where we’re going. Don’t you know that?”

Purdick sat up and made a valiant effort to get once more in touch with things ordinary and commonplace.

“S-say, Larry,” he whispered, “what was it that blew up and stopped me?”

Larry was laughing again.

“I guess you were the only thing that blew up. But it was that big pine you’re looking at that stopped you. You hit it as square as if you were steering for it. Shake you up much?”

“No; I guess I’m all here yet,” said Purdick, rolling off his tree sled. “But believe me, Larry, that was some ride!”

“Fifty-eight seconds; I timed you by my wrist watch. Did it seem as long as that—or longer?”

Purdick shook his head. “You can’t prove anything by me. After I lost my stick I just shut my eyes and came. Whereabouts are we?”

“Not more than a couple of miles from our camp site and a few hundred feet above the trail—if I’ve kept my reckoning. But let’s be on our way. We are ahead of those rustlers now, and we want to keep ahead. If we move right along, we may not have to do any more sprinting.”

“Here’s hoping,” said little Purdick, stifling a groan as he began once more to swing the vegetable-kingdom legs. “That run on top of the ridge just about put me to sleep from the waist down.”

“You’ll harden up, after we’ve been out a few days,” Larry predicted; and then he set a course diagonally through the forest. In a very short time they came to the thawing zone, first slushy snow and then mud, and springy morass, bad going that slowed them down in spite of all the care they could take in picking their way. But this, too, was left behind in the course of time, and at last they found themselves skirting the canyon on a high bench-like plateau thickly carpeted with the fir needles and densely shaded by the primeval trees.

Here, where their hurrying footsteps made no sound, they could hear the riffle and splash of the stream in the gorge below, and it was Purdick’s quick ear that presently detected other noises—namely, the well-remembered clink of horseshoes upon stone.

“Glory!” he exclaimed, closing up swiftly upon his file leader, “they’re coming! We lost so much time back there in the mud that they’ve overtaken us!”

“How about those legs of yours?” said Larry over his shoulder.

“They’ll run—they’ve got to run!” gasped Purdick. “Pitch out, and I’ll try to keep you in sight.”

Luckily, this last race was a short one. A scant quarter of a mile farther on they came to the park-like opening where their camp had been pitched, and in another minute they were sliding down to the little flat where they had built their fire and spread the beds of fir tips.

The lost book was there, lying on the ground at the roots of the big tree, just where it had fallen from Purdick’s hands. If the night raiders had had a light of any sort, they could hardly have helped seeing it. But they had probably meant to make their attack a surprise, for which the moon was then giving sufficient light, and, finding the fire out and the camp deserted, had doubtless begun the pursuit at once.

Larry, being about two jumps ahead of Purdick, snatched up the book, and whirling quickly with arms outspread, swept his slighter companion back into the shelter of the wood.

“They’re coming—they’re right here!” he hissed; and they had barely time to fling themselves down under a low-growing tree when the three men appeared on the trail leading from the upper canyon and halted in the little intervale.

From where they lay under the drooping branches of the friendly little tree the two boys could see their late pursuers quite plainly. The cripple was riding one of the horses, with his crutch thrust under the saddle leather. The one the cripple had called “Dowling” was riding the other horse, and the third, the biggest of the three, was afoot.

At the halt the cripple barked a command at the one who was walking.

“Take a look at their camp and see if they’ve left anything worth swipin’, Bart,” he said; and the big man lounged up to the wood edge, kicked at the remains of the fire, turned the beds over with an investigative foot, and even went so far as to stoop and look around under the low-spreading branches of the nearer trees. As he did this, it was only Larry’s quick wit that saved them from certain discovery. With a swift premonition of what the man was going to do, he reached up and pulled one of the low-hanging branches of the little tree down so that its foliage screened them perfectly. But for that, the peering robber must have seen them.

“Nothin’ doin’,” said the man gruffly as he straightened up; and a few seconds later the two riders and their foot follower had gone on to disappear around a jutting cliff in the canyon.

“Gee, Larry, but that was a close one!” sighed little Purdick, after the clinking hoofbeats had died away into silence. Then: “I guess I’ll have to have something done to my old heart. It makes altogether too much noise when there’s anything due to happen. Why, if that big thief had been listening half as sharply as he was looking, he could have heard it as plain as a trap-drum! What do we do next?”

Larry glanced at his wrist watch. It was still only the middle of the forenoon.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “We’ll have to go back to the pass by the trail, and the middle of the day is going to be the worst time to hit the snow. The wet pack will be as slippery as grease, and we’ll be pretty sure to get snow-blind with the noon glare. Suppose we go back in the woods a piece and bed down and catch up on a little of the sleep that we lost last night. How does that strike you?”

“It strikes me right where I live,” said Purdick, yawning in the mere anticipation of a rest halt. “I suppose there is no danger of those rascals coming back?”

“Not the least in the world. What they’ll do if they really mean business—as I’m much afraid they do—will be to go down to Nophi and outfit the same as we have for a trip over the range. It’s perfectly plain that they believe they have a sure pointer on the whereabouts of the Golden Spider through us, and, as I told Dick, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of them. But that’s a future. Let’s hunt us a hole and turn in.”

The hole-hunting was a short process. A few hundred yards above their former camping place they found a little dell under the trees where the fallen needles of many seasons lay a foot deep. There is no better wilderness bed when the fir needles are dry, and within a very few minutes after they had stretched out on the fragrant, springy carpet, each with his locked hands under his head for a pillow, they were asleep.

During his year in college, Larry had often said that he had an alarm clock in his head, proving the assertion by his ability to wake up at any given hour in the night merely by fixing that hour in his mind before going to sleep. Upon this day-nap occasion in the Lost Canyon wood he set the alarm for three o’clock, and, true to his boast, it lacked but a few minutes of three when he sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around sleepily to try to make out where he was and how he came to be there.

It all came back in a moment, and he reached over to shake Purdick, who was still sleeping like a log.

“Wake up, Purdy,” he said. “Time to eat a bite o’ pie.”