"If you want to go after the party, I'll give you trooper Simpson."
"I'm going after Okanagan and I mean to get him," said Douglas grimly. "I reckon he fooled the tourists, but they've got to pay the fine. Can't you give me a bushman trooper? Okanagan's a tough proposition and he doesn't like me."
The officer said he had not another man and must go off to make inquiries about a forest fire. He sent for his horse and the group on the terrace saw him ride down the trail.
"I'm sorry for Father and know he'll hate to give up the heads; but I think the men were satisfied Jimmy's helper cheated him," Laura remarked.
A few days afterwards, Stannard's party stopped one evening at a small, empty homestead. Thin forest surrounded the clearing, but on one side the trees were burned and the bare rampikes shone in the sun. In places the crooked fence had fallen down, tall fern grew among the stumps, and willows had run across the cultivated ground. For all that, the loghouse was good, and since the horses could not go much farther, Stannard resolved to use the ranch for a supply depot. On the rocks the climbing party could not carry heavy loads.
When the sun got low they sat on the veranda and smoked. They did not talk much, and Jimmy felt the brooding calm was melancholy. Somebody, perhaps with high hope, had cleared the ground the forest now was taking back. Labor and patience had gone for nothing; the grass was already smothered by young trees. It looked as if the wilderness triumphed over human effort.
"How long do you think its owner was chopping out the ranch? And why did he let it go?" Jimmy asked.
"I reckon nine or ten years," Deering replied. "Maybe he speculated on somebody's starting a sawmill or a mine. Maybe the block carried a mortgage and he pulled out to earn the interest. As a rule, the small homesteader takes any job he can get, and when his wallet's full comes back to chop, but a railroad construction gang's the usual stunt and some don't come back. I expect the fellow was blown up by dynamite or a rock fell on him. Anyhow, when you hit a deserted ranch, the owner's story is something like that. Canada's not the get-rich country land boomers state."
Then Deering turned to Stannard. "Did you find a good line to the ridge from which we reckon to make the peak?"
"I found a line I think will go. You follow the ridge until a big buttress breaks the top some distance above the snow level. A col goes down to a glacier and one might get across to another ridge that would help us up the peak. Still I doubt if our map's accurate, and my notion is to climb the buttress."