“Well, don’t you believe me?” said Tregelly.
“I always believe what you say, Bob; but I don’t understand what you mean now.”
“You don’t? Well, then, I’ll soon make you, my son. It’s like this: I feel just like a squirrel in a cage, galloping on over miles of wire and never getting a bit farther, or like one of those chaps on the old-fashioned treadmill, who were always going upstairs, but never got to the top.”
“Look here,” said Dallas, springing up suddenly from his seat in the rough shelter made with pine-boughs, where they had been now for some days, while they tried the banks of a tiny creek, one of many which they had followed to their sources in their daring quest. “This is no time for idle talk; which is it to be? Shall we retreat at once, and try to get back to the main river, where we may find help, and perhaps save our lives, or go on?”
There was a dead silence, and then a gust of wind swept down the narrow valley, laden with fine, dusty snow, evidently a forerunner of a wintry storm.
“If we start back now,” said Abel at last, “we are not sure of reaching the settlement before the winter sets in.”
“And if we do we’ve nothing left to live upon, my sons. You see, those last supplies emptied the bag, and we’ve never settled down since. You both said, ‘Let it be a man or a mouse.’”
“And you said ‘All right,’” cried Dallas angrily.
“So I did, my son; but I hoped we should turn out men instead of mice.”
“Well,” said Dallas bitterly, “we must not find fault with one another. We did our best.”