"He kin ride," admitted Lem. "I've never seen him fizzle, an' he's be'n out here off an' on considerable; timber-cruisin' first an' then prospectin'. He 'lowed last year he'd struck er gold mine or somethin'."
"I know," she repeated, "I know. It was only a few miles from here he found those splendid indications."
"Yes," said the boy with his impish smile, "an' lost 'em."
"The mineral is there," she said with an upward tilt of her chin. "The ore he brought down assayed remarkably rich. But he had broken his compass that day and a heavy mist settled over every peak and spur. There was absolutely nothing to mark a course from. Still, it's there, Lem, locked in the heart of the hills. He will find it again, sometime."
She went over and took her hat from its peg on the wall, and Lem followed, waiting on the steps while she locked the door.
"There will be no more timber-cruising when he takes his position at the new mills," she said as they started up the trail; "no more chances to prospect. But he is coming out to the settlement before he goes to Seattle, for a last trip into the hills, and, if your mother can go with us, he intends to take me, to see the Cascades at close range, and the canyon and the leaning tower, and spend a night or two in his favorite camp at the headwaters."
A few rods from the schoolhouse the trail to the Myers clearing, which was her boarding-place, began an abrupt ascent across the face of a burned over ridge. They made the first part in silence, then she paused to look back on the desolate waste. "Oh," she said, "it's like the end of the world. It's always so wretchedly hot on this dead side-hill; the gravel shifts so underfoot. It's very different on the Tumwater road."
"Whar's that?" asked Lem.
"Why, it's the way from Olympia to the Tumwater mills where Mr. Forrest has lived since he was a small boy. And it's through the woods and down a great ridge, with glimpses of blue sea between the firs, and always, even in warmest weather, a cool, salt breeze. The lower falls of the Des Chutes plunge into the Sound there, at Tumwater, and their thunder fills the gorge. We used to go down often, walking or riding, and sometimes when the wind and tide were right, we sailed. I suppose, Lem, you never have seen a yacht?"
"Wal, no, I dunno's I hev."