That was the way it was left when they resumed their march along the frozen trail whose windings presently led them so far around the mountain that they lost sight of the snow slope over which they had climbed to reach the high gulch. Before they had headed the gulch to come out upon the bare, wind-stripped slope over which the trail doubled back toward the pass, the crescent moon which had thus far lighted them upon their way began to pale in the first flush of the coming dawn. Just ahead they could see the comparatively shallow depression in the mountain range which marked their goal, and in a few minutes more the toiling ascent was accomplished and they stood on the bald summit of the pass.
It was this last ascent that gave them the elevated view-point from which they could trace the backward windings of the trail almost all the way down to the place where it emerged from the timber. In the increasing dawn light they could make out, far below them, the three horsemen like black insects crawling along on the snow sheet. [While they looked, one] of the insects [paused, appeared to dance for an instant, and then disappeared], and they knew that one of the horses had slipped from the icy trail to plunge aside into a snowdrift.
“That ought to settle them,” said little Purdick, making a pair of shades out of his curved hands to shut out the snow glare, as he watched the struggle going on below. “They’ve still got the worst of it ahead of them, if they only knew it.”
For a few minutes the three watchers stood motionless, looking on at the efforts of the two men who remained on the trail to get their submerged comrade out of the drift. When the thing was finally accomplished it was at the cost of the loss of a horse. Quite plainly they saw the freed and plunging animal break its way out of the drift and paw its way up to the surface of hard-frozen crust, only to lose its footing and go whirling and sliding down the steep, mile-long toboggan slide of the slope below, growing smaller and smaller until at last it disappeared entirely.
Dick Maxwell took off his hat and waved it as the three men on the trail, leading the two remaining horses, turned and began to creep back down the path of hazard which had proved so nearly fatal to at least one of them.
“Good-by, you hold-ups!” he shouted, as if he could make himself heard over the half-mile or more of intervening height and distance. “Sorry you’ve lost your nerve, but we’re mighty glad to see the last of you, just the same. Good-by!”
“Don’t you be too sure about having seen the last of them,” Larry put in soberly. “If they really believe we can show them the way to the Golden Spider, and so give them a chance to ‘jump’ it, they’ll not give up so easily. You must remember that the summer is still young.”
“Summer?” said Dick, with a shiver; “it seems as if it might be Christmas up here with all this snow.” Then to Purdick, who was untying the cooking utensils hanging from Fishbait’s pack saddle: “What’s on your mind, Purdy?”
“Coffee,” said Purdick. “I feel as if I’d been up all night. Which pack was the solidified alcohol put in?”
Nobody remembered, so there had to be a search made in both jack packs, since there was no fuel of any sort on the high, wind-swept barren of the pass. The emergency cartridges were found, after a time, and Purdick rigged the tripod of the alcohol stove and put a cookerful of clean snow on to melt. That done, he began rummaging in the packs again, methodically at first, but a little later with feverish haste.