“I see, Alex!” he called out, excitedly. “I know what you mean!”
“Where are they?” called John, excitedly.
“Oh, not sheep yet,” said Rob, “but just where they’ve been, I think.”
“Look, Mr. John,” said Alex, now taking John by the arm and pointing across the near-by ravines. “Don’t you see that long mark, lighter in color, which runs down the side of that mountain over there, a mile or two away, and up above us?”
“Yes, I can see that; but what is it?”
“Well, that’s a sheep trail, a path,” said Alex. “That’s a trail they make coming down regularly from the high country beyond. It looks to me as though they might have a watering place, or maybe a lick, over in there somewhere. It looks so good to me, at least, that I think we’ll make a camp.”
They turned now, under the old hunter’s guidance, and retraced their steps until they found themselves at the edge of timber, where Alex threw down his bundle under a tall spruce-tree whose branches spread out so as almost to form a tent of itself. He now loosened his straps and bits of rope from about the bundle, and fastened these about his waist. With remaining pieces of twine he swung up the package to the bough of the tree above the ground as high as he could reach.
“We don’t want any old porcupine coming here and eating up our grub. They almost gnaw through a steel plate to get at anything greasy or salty,” he explained. “We’ll call this camp, and we’ll stop here to-night, because I can see that if we go up to that trail and do any waiting around it will be too late for us to get back home to-night.”
Although no game had as yet been sighted, the confidence that it was somewhere in the country made the boys forget their fatigue. They followed Alex up the mountain-slopes, which close at hand proved steeper than they had looked for, keeping up a pretty fast pace, until finally they got almost as high up as the trail which Alex had sighted. This latter lay at some distance to the right of their present course, and a high, knife-edged ridge ran down from the hills, separating the hunters from the mountain-side beyond. Alex now turned to his young companions and said in a low tone:
“You’d better stay here now for a little while. I’ll crawl up to the top yonder and look over. If you see me motion to you, come on up to where I am.”