CHAPTER IV
DADDY LONGBEARD
When Dick Maxwell was left alone on the summit of Mule-Ear Pass, he watched his two companions running along the spur ridge as long as he could see them. But after they were fairly out of sight he began to get ready for the descent of the western trail.
When he attacked it, he found the downward trail on the western slope much less difficult than that over which they had gained the pass from the east. So, by the time the daily thaw was setting in, Dick had his two-jack train well down into the timber and was casting about for a good place in which to camp and wait for Larry and Purdick.
Oddly enough, as he thought, the good places were slow in revealing themselves. Upon leaving the snow slopes and entering the timber, the little-used trail, after crossing and recrossing the little torrent in the gulch a number of times, seemed to fade out gradually. Being only a sort of apprentice pathfinder, Dick didn’t notice the fading at first. What he was looking for was a bit of grass for the burros in a place where Larry and Purdick would have no trouble in finding it, and him, when they should come over the mountain.
It was getting pretty well along toward noon when Dick began to wonder if something wasn’t wrong. For one thing, the trail seemed to have disappeared entirely, and for another, he suddenly realized that the noise of the stream, which he had been holding in the back of his mind as a guide, had been gradually growing fainter and fainter until now he couldn’t hear it at all.
Plainly, it was time to call a halt and do a little thinking. Though he had been taking it easy, and letting the jacks do the same, he knew he must have covered considerable distance in the course of the forenoon. And every added mile he was traveling was making it just that much harder for Larry and Purdick to overtake and find him. Moreover, the little pack beasts couldn’t go on forever without feeding. He must find grass, and find it soon, or the burros would suffer.
Having reached that sensible conclusion, he hitched the patient little animals to a tree, and made a wide circuit in search of a patch of grass. Luckily, he soon found one in a little open glade, and to this he drove the burros, relieved them of the packs, and turned them loose to graze.
Munching his own midday meal while the jacks were feeding, Dick did some more thinking. Little by little the conviction that he had lost his way grew upon him, and the consequences began to loom up. Since he himself had packed their haversack, he knew that Larry and Purdick had barely enough for two meals. If he and the provisions were lost so that the two who had been left behind couldn’t find them, they’d go hungry.
Confronted by this nettlesome fact, Dick ate his own dinner hurriedly. The only thing to do was to turn back and find out where he had left the trail. But when he came to consider this matter of back-tracking, confusion set in. In which direction had he wandered? Was the stream he had been following to the left or to the right?