"What are you talking about?" yelled Leslie as Ross raced awkwardly around the cabin on his snow-shoes.
Weimer opened the door and peered out through his colored goggles. "Has dot poy gone crazy?" he asked.
Leslie, without pausing to answer, hurried after Ross. "Where to?" he yelled.
"The tool house," returned Ross over his shoulder. "It’s fastened between two trees, and hangs out over the foot of the dump! See?"
But, instead of taking the trail to the tunnel, Ross struck across the mounds and hillocks and drifts of snow that blocked the trail leading to Miners’ Camp. Through the tangle of pines and hemlocks he led the way until he stopped at the foot of the snow-heaped dump and looked up at the tool house, one side of which rested on the dump, while the opposite side was fastened to sturdy hemlocks whose trunks arose from the débris heaped about them from the tunnel. The tool house was now a shapeless white form, while the dump was buried beneath tons of snow.
"It was here," Ross explained breathlessly, "that Sandy stood. I was looking out at the McKenzies from a crack up in the house. He came back and looked up under the house and then grinned and went back to the others. They had started to leave, you know. Now why did he want to look under that house?"
"That’s it!" cried Leslie with excited conviction. "They had cached the stuff under the house and he wanted to make sure that their trail could not be seen. Ross, the sticks are up under there, high and dry."
"You bet!" shouted Ross turning in his tracks. "We’ll get shovels and dig for it. And, Less, if we find the cache, we’ll let off one blast around here outside of the tunnel that ’ill show them, if they’re still over in Camp, that we ain’t dead yet."
"Nor dumb and stupid, either!" cried Leslie delightedly as he legged it rapidly over the snow.
In the door of the shack they found Weimer still standing, shielding his eyes with one hand and calling questions into space. The boys, appearing, stopped to answer, not only satisfying the old man but receiving a valuable suggestion.