Another instant Ross paused and thought. Then he added the singular explanation which he believed would make the foregoing more lucid to Leslie:
"As I write the sheriff is standing over me," and then bethought himself just in time to avoid signing his name.
"Huh!" grunted the sheriff reading the last sentence. "So he is; and now hustle!"
Ross hustled most willingly. Seizing his top-coat and cap he was ready in a few moments for the perilous journey over the Crosby trail. Silently he mounted the brown and white horse, all the time glancing anxiously at the mouth of the tunnel. He rode in front of the sheriff and slyly urged his horse forward until the intervening trees hid the mouth of the tunnel from which still issued the steady grind and thud of the drills.
It was not until the two horses were cautiously feeling their way down the perilous trail, and Ross saw far below him the shacks of Miners’ Camp that some of the difficulties of his sudden venture began to present themselves to him. His decision had been made so hurriedly that he had had no time to think all around the subject of the arrest and his own action. It had seemed to him outrageous that a father should arrest his own son even though that boy had done wrong. Ross revolted at the idea.
"I don’t wonder," he thought, "that Less is afraid of his father. But his fear wouldn’t sit so hard on his temper but what there’d be no end of explosions, and then where would they both get to?"
It was the thought of this state of affairs that had led Ross to the impulsive determination to go to that father and ask for a few months of grace for the son. In this, as he acknowledged to himself, he had a mixed motive and part of the mixture was not unselfish.
"If he’ll only let Leslie stay and help me through the winter and earn the money," was his thought, "if I can make him see that Leslie’s no quitter, and that he knows he has made a big mistake and is willing to bone down and undo it–if I can only make him see!"
It was here that Ross’s misgivings began. He knew he was no talker and evidently, as Leslie said, the father was a man of violent temper.
"I’ll probably have my little trip under arrest for nothing," Ross told himself as they reached the foot of Crosby. "Mr. Jones will blow my head off and send back for Leslie. Queer father not to come himself instead of sending a sheriff and a warrant and so disgrace his own son!"