The two talked together a moment, and then Weston joined them. In a moment the three fell apart, and appeared to be talking excitedly. Presently Waymart dropped the discussion, and turning his back walked away a few steps with his hands in his pockets and stood in a listening attitude. Ross watched with absorbing interest. Even at that distance he could see that the discussion between the other two was not amiable. The scene lasted but a few moments, and then all three descended to the cabin together.
That evening after supper, Ross washed the day’s dishes, brought in wood, and put the room to rights, while Weimer alternately smoked and snored in his bunk. The room was dimly lighted by candles in candlesticks thrust into logs. Ross, so tired and sleepy he could scarcely keep his eyes open, hung up the dish-pan on its nail beside the stove, and looked longingly toward the emergency chest pushed beneath his bunk. Not one word had he mastered of the contents of the books he had stowed away there with such high hopes.
"I don’t believe the McKenzies are coming over," he told Weimer, as he filled the stove and wound up the clock. "It’s too late for them."
Weimer made no reply. His pipe had fallen on his chest, and his hair-encircled mouth was wide open in a vacuous sleep. At that moment the rising wind beat the snow against the window, and Ross uttered an exclamation. He had forgotten to shut the tool-house door, and, fearing that with the wind in the south the little log house would be filled with snow before morning, he went back up the trail to the tunnel. Climbing noiselessly over the soft snow, he arrived at the ore dump, and was making for the tool house across the mouth of the tunnel when a light flickered in his path.
Startled, he looked into the tunnel, and saw three figures at the end silhouetted against the dim candle-light.
"Lon, Sandy and Waymart," he muttered.
There was no danger of his being discovered, so dark was the night. Therefore, he sat down on his heels beside the tool house, and watched, puzzled at first to understand the movements of the men.
"Oh," he muttered suddenly, "they’re measuring to see how fast the work is going."
With a tape line the men were estimating the cubic feet of rock excavated by Ross and Weimer.
Ross hugged his knees, and exulted. His "friends the enemy" might measure all they chose, he thought; and every length of the tape line would reveal to them the futility of waiting to jump the Weimer-Grant claims.