The girl looked askance at the tell-tale track. "It—you can't be sure it is his," was all she could think to say.
Dexter laughed. "I ought to know his boot marks after all the miles I've tramped with him. It's Archie."
He led the way forward again, walking as fast as he could through the dense timber. The rediscovered footprints soon turned away from the line of blazed trees, and he gathered that the fugitive had crossed the ancient trail by accident and was guiding his course by other landmarks. Dexter considered possibilities, and decided to place his trust in the old-time ax scars. He was confident that sooner or later he would be led to the mountain pass, and as he felt equally certain that Archie was making towards the same destination, it struck him as being foolish to stray from the clearly marked path to chase a faint foot-trail that might at any time leave him groping in the air.
All that day he and Alison labored onward through the silent wilderness, breaking their way through matted thickets, passing up long, dark glens that twisted aimlessly among the lower mountains, ascending steep hill slopes, climbing along the brink of cliffs where a misstep would have landed them into yawning gulfs below, crossing the scarp of saw-backed ridges, and finally attaining the edge of timberline under a thawing snow-field, whence they gazed afar through an open gap between the surrounding snow caps.
Dusk was approaching, but there was still light enough left to make out the dim, gray line of the northern horizon, distantly framed by the shadow of flanking mountain peaks. Dexter looked off from the heights, feeling the stir of the free north breeze, and nodded soberly to himself.
"The outlet!" he said at length. "The road is open from here, and the new country's beyond."
He moved forward again, across the slope of the look-out mountain, and presently struck descending ground, which he knew went down into the forested valley on the other side of the range. And before he had gone any distance he again discovered fresh marks in the earth to tell of hobnailed boots that had passed that way before him. Quietly he called Alison's attention. "Archie!" he said. "He used his own method, and evidently came around from a different direction; but he's also found the pass. He can't be so many hours ahead of us."
The girl cast an apprehensive glance into the twilight shadows, but her lips were closed, and when the corporal went on she followed mutely at his heels. He increased his stride, intending to travel as far as possible before darkness halted him, failing to remember that his companion's frailer strength might not be able to keep the pace he set. But he was aware presently that she was breathing quickly, stumbling along behind him. He turned questioningly.
"Tired?" he asked.
"We've been on our feet since early dawn," she reminded him.