“Have you seen anything of him?” he asked.
“No,” said Hugh, “but he’s going down hill, bleeding, as you see, and falling down every little while. We’ll find him before long.”
“All right,” said Jack, “he’s our meat, I guess. If he keeps on bleeding like this he can’t go very far. We can’t go down there after him and then come back here, and I want to go up and look if we can’t see across the range. How do you feel, Hugh, do you want to go down and get the sheep, or shall we leave him there and all go up and look over the range and then go back?”
“Why,” said Hugh, “I’d better go down and butcher him, and you and Joe can go up to the top of the rocks here and see what you can see on the other side. It isn’t far. That low place, just above where the sheep stood when you shot, is the point to make for, and I reckon you can see all you want to from there. Then you come back, and come down to me. We’ve got quite a job to get that sheep into camp to-night. The fact is, I don’t believe we can do it. It’s too large for the three of us to carry down in one trip.”
Jack and Joe went back in the direction that Hugh had suggested, and keeping well up the hill, soon found themselves close to a little saddle, where one of the side arms of the glacier started. It was an easy matter to climb up here and presently they stood on the crest of the Continental Divide, looking over a broad valley in which nothing was to be seen except rocks and stunted pine trees, and dimly through the thick, hazy atmosphere a distant lake and some high, snow-covered mountain crests.
“Do you know anything about this country, Joe?” asked Jack.
“No,” said Joe, “not much. I reckon that big lake we see over there may be Lake McDonald, but I don’t know these mountains, nor this country close to us.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I reckon Hugh will know something about it when we tell him what we’ve seen. Now let us go back on the ice, and then get down to him. It looks as if we were going to have bad weather.”
The sky had become overcast, and the wind began to moan among the peaks. It looked like a snowstorm.
They walked down the glacier, keeping as nearly as possible on its comb, for they did not wish to slip, as Joe had done in the morning.