Here, too, the forests were receding on the approach to timber line, with steep, snow-covered slopes to take their place, and in consequence, the light was immeasurably better; so good, indeed, that they could now see the trail quite plainly, part of the time as a deeply trodden path between snowbanks, and in other places a hard-frozen ridge from which the snow, thawing in the June sun, had sunk away.
It was remarkable how the sure-footed little pack animals were able to climb steadily, rarely slipping on the icy track, and plodding along at a walk so fast that it pushed the three boys to keep up with them on the slippery ascent. It was Dick, who had made one winter trip into the mountains a couple of years earlier, who cautioned his companions about the danger of slipping from the trail.
“Look out in these ridgy places,” he warned. “If you slip aside, you’re a goner; just as likely as not you’ll drop into a drift twenty feet deep. I did that little thing once, and——”
Before he could tie anything to the “and,” there was a shout from the rear, and the place in the trail which had lately been occupied by little Purdick was vacant.
“Hold up, Larry!—Purdy’s taken a dive!” Dick yelled, and the procession was halted. On the lower side of the trail, at the spot where Purdick had been last seen, there was a round hole in the snow crust. It was neither as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but, like Mercutio’s wound, it served. Down in the bottom of it a disturbance, much like that in the pit of an ant-lion when that active little bug is burrowing with its prey, was going on to an accompaniment of smothered cries.
“Don’t fight yourself to death!” Dick called out. “We’ll get you in a minute.” Then to Larry: “Grab me by the feet—I’m going after him”—which he did, head foremost, to be dragged back a moment later, bringing the buried one with him.
“B-r-r-r!” shivered little Purdick, beating the snow out of his clothes; “if anybody had ever told me that I was scheduled to take a snow bath in June—whoosh! it’s all down inside of me!”
“It’ll melt in a little while,” said Dick consolingly. “I’ve been there, too, and I know how it feels. But we’d better be humping ourselves. If I’m not mightily mistaken I can hear those horses coming up the canyon trail right now! Listen!”
They did listen, and there was no reason to doubt Dick’s acuteness of hearing. Far back along the way they had come they could hear the clink of horseshoes upon stone; and the horses were evidently being pushed to their best up-hill speed.
“It’s still up to us,” said Larry. “If we can turn that high gulch shoulder up ahead before they get out of the timber.... I don’t know whether they’d go so far as to try to murder us, but as long as we’re out on the bare snow slope we make a pretty plain target, in this moonlight.”