For a moment as he sat dreaming, eyes half closed, he thought of himself as a young native of the land, the old man the last patriarch of his tribe and the girl the last link of a vanishing race.
“Huh!” he smiled as he wakened from his revery. “Strange world! In a month we will be with white men, living as they live.” But would they?
With all the hunting and their keen enjoyment of the spring, they did not neglect the trail. Each day brought them nearer to the range of snow blown mountains. Each hour hastened the time when they must try the pass.
Sometimes at night by the campfire they spoke of it in awed whispers. At other times, under bright midday skies, they laughingly talked of the long slide they would take when they reached the other side. How little they knew of that which lay before them.
Gordon Duncan thought only of Timmie and his green gold. Faye Duncan lived most for the care and protection of the kindly old man she loved more than her own life. Johnny dreamed strange dreams of gold, fortune, and a dark haired handsome Scotch girl. At times he wondered why they had feared to meet a fellow human being. That wonder was fading. Growing ever stronger was his desire to solve the mystery of Timmie and his green gold.
“Just over the mountains, and we’ll know,” he told himself many times.
So at last they reached the foothills of those vast and silent mountains, and their troubles began.
As they passed the lower levels game vanished. Only once in two days did they see a rabbit. Then it escaped into the brush.
At the end of three days, after skirting many a spring-born freshet and creeping about a score of cliffs, they arrived at the base of a mountain, the lowest of all the range, but startling in its whiteness and immensity. There, sore footed and weary, they built another campfire and sat down to a meal of steaming coffee and frozen berries.
The girl looked at Johnny. There was a question in her eyes. “Dare we try the mountain?”
“It is three days’ travel back to the land of game,” he replied. “Can it be worse ahead? Will he turn back?”
He looked at the grizzled old Scot, who as ever sat dozing by the fire.
“Will he live to—to see the other side of the mountain?”
For a long time after that they sat there in silence. What were the girl’s thoughts? Johnny would gladly have known. As for himself, he was thinking of the possibility of sudden tragedy for the old Scot and of their battle to win their way back to the haunts of civilized man.