“Well, we’ll get supper. You want to cool off and quiet down.”
Weston felt that this was true, and it was a relief to start the fire and prepare the meal, for he had found the rush of emotion which had swept over him almost overwhelming. It was, however, not until the meal was ready that he was quite master of himself, and they ate it before they said anything further about the matter. Then Devine took out his pipe, and lying with his back against a fir, turned to his comrade as the soft dusk settled.
“Whether Grenfell knew where he was going when he started out last night, or was led by some blind impulse or subconscious memory, is more than I can tell, and, anyway, it’s not a point that greatly matters now,” he said. “The cold fact is that you struck the water on the creek where, as he told you, he once got a drink.”
“But things don’t fit in,” objected Weston.
“Oh,” said his companion, “you let me talk. You’ve been in this country a few years. I was raised in it. He said that a creek ran from the range, and, though there’s mighty little water in it, I guess it does that now. There’s rock, milling rock shot with gold, under it, and a small flow of water will filter a long way through gravel.”
“But he described it as an ordinary open creek,” persisted Weston.
“That’s easy,” said Devine. “It was, quite a while ago, and nature handles these mountains mighty roughly, as you ought to know. She sweeps them with cloudbursts that wash half a hillside into the valleys, and now and then with snowslides and tremendous falls of rock. One of them filled up that creek, and, as far as I can figure, it did rather more. It filled up the gully through which the creek flowed high up on the range, and, while a little water still creeps through, most of the melted snow goes down another creek. As I took the trouble to ascertain, it splits right through the lower slopes and comes out most a league away.”
This seemed reasonable. Most of the streams among those ranges originate, as Weston knew, in the melting snow, but there was still a point his comrade had left unexplained.
“Then where’s the lake?” he asked.
Devine laughed.