“Good thing we don’t want to go any farther,” Frank exclaimed, throwing himself down on the ledge and wiping his streaming face. “We couldn’t scale the wall ahead with a ladder. Now,” he went on, “look out there to the south and see if there’s an aeroplane in sight.”
Jack brought out the field-glass and looked long and anxiously, but there was no sign of a man-made bird in the clear sky.
“I don’t believe, after all, that he’ll come in an aeroplane,” the boy said, directly. “Suppose he took a notion to get a motor boat and run up the north branch of the Flathead river, and so on into Kintla lake, down there? How long would it take him to make the trip?”
“About ten thousand years,” was Frank’s reply. “He never could get up the north branch. There’s too many waterfalls. Why, man, the stream descends several thousand feet before it gets to sea level.”
“Anyway,” Jack replied, “if you’ll get out of my way I’ll take a look at the lake through the glass.”
“You’ll probably see him come sailing up the slope in a battleship,” Frank said, in a sarcastic tone.
Jack, without speaking, turned his glass to the north and gazed long and anxiously over the lake. Presently Frank saw him give a start of surprise and lean forward, as if to get a closer view of some object which had come into the field of the lens.
“What is it?” he asked.
Jack passed him the glass with no word of explanation, and the boy hastily swept the shores of the mountain lake.
“I don’t see any motor boat,” he said, directly.