[XX. CAPTAIN JOE MAKES A DISCOVERY]
[XXI. A CAMPFIRE HIGH ON THE HILLS]
[XXII. THE SURGEON TURNS DETECTIVE]
[XXIII. THE POLICEMAN MAKES A MISTAKE]
[XXIV. MORE SURPRISES THAN ONE]
CHAPTER I.—CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN A MOTOR BOAT.
The motor boat Rambler lay at the very summit of the Rocky Mountains. She was not in a lake, either, although there were lakes of ice not far away. She was not in motion, and there was a great silence all around her.
She lay, propped upright, on a platform car, and the car, with two broken wheels, stood on a make-shift spur of track on the right-of-way of the Canadian Pacific railroad. An unusual place to find a motor boat. But listen.
The Rambler was en route from the South Branch, Chicago, to the headwaters of the Columbia river. She had passed without serious accident down Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinaw, through the Sault Ste. Marie river and canal, and over the crystal waters of old Superior to Port Arthur, where she had been coaxed to the deck of the platform car upon which she now stood.