“I don’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure,” the rancher returned, squinting thoughtfully into the sun.
“Maybe it’s that same bird who stole our food,” Jack speculated. “For an unpopulated mountain, this place seems to have quite a bit of activity.”
“Too much,” Warner tersely agreed.
The near disaster had slightly unnerved everyone. Both Mr. Livingston and Craig Warner were puzzled, for the rancher said again that he knew of no prospector who frequented Crazy Mountain.
“Why would anyone want to prevent us from reaching the pass?” he speculated. “Walz would have a reason, but I doubt he ever got this far. Even with Ranier he certainly couldn’t have made it.”
“Someone else may know about the cache of gold,” Jack suggested.
“It begins to look that way,” Warner agreed. “Either that, or we’re dealing with a screwball. If a man lives too long alone—well, sometimes his mind becomes twisted.”
After a brief rest, the party struggled on, the mystery unsolved. Warner used exceeding caution, keeping almost constant watch of the ledges above. But he didn’t get a glimpse of anyone.
Climbing was slow work, and the Scouts were hampered by the necessity for keeping constantly alert for further trouble from above. A misstep could have meant a bad fall because below were enormous cliffs and breath-taking drops.
“With luck, we should soon reach the pass,” Warner advised the group. “Our contour map doesn’t show it, so I’m depending entirely on that memory sketch I made.”