"You mean it is you who don't care," said Stratton. "You are ready to take the risks, whatever they are. And if you are determined to go on braving Providence, or Tyee Sahgalee, or whoever it is, the rest of the day, I'm going to join the expedition; that is, unless Mrs. Kingsley is afraid to stay here alone with Samantha."
"Oh," answered Louise, at last awake to the situation, "I want you to go."
"I thought so," and he smiled. "I've proved something of a mascot on occasion, and I'll look after the Captain."
The horses were brought and presently they were trailing away up the pathless slopes in the wake of the piebald pony; fording countless streams, leaping them, sinking in pitfalls through treacherous banks of bloom. When, switchbacking up a lofty rise, Alice ventured to look down, all the colored breadth of Paradise park unfolded like a map, and the dome gathered majesty at every turn. They gained a shoulder, rounded a curve, and before them stretched the levels of a plateau carpeted with snow. Then, as they moved across this field, mountain on mountain opened, shading to blue distance. Through a gap, out of a woolly cloud, shone the opal crown of Adams, and presently, far off St. Helens rose like a floating berg on an uptossed sea.
They dismounted at the foot of a knob flanked by loose rock. The red stain of old snow was under their feet and beyond the spur shone the clean, blue-green edge of the glacier. "We are higher than the treeline, now," said Philip, "and above the clouds."
She drew a breath of delight, lifting her glance to the near dome. "And it looks as though we could reach the summit in fifteen or twenty minutes. Oh, Phil, come, let's go."
Kingsley laughed. "We haven't climbed nine thousand feet; the hardest third of the ascent is above us. Don't you remember, the only two men who ever made that summit were half a day in just passing Gibraltar. We may find it no longer passable."
While his look rested on the grim fortress a thin cloud rose like smoke from its base. It covered the cliff swiftly and trailed across the dome. "Out of nothing, without notice," and he shook his head; "that's what I've heard."
He turned. Stratton was busy searching for a safe hitching-place for his horse; he never stood well. But Mose had stepped nearer Kingsley. The boy's shoulders were inclined forward, and his eyes, in that instant, were those of a crouching animal about to spring.
"Well, Mose," he said carelessly, "your Tyee Sahgalee is hiding his face. I suppose you think we've come far enough. But we'll show him."