Here Leslie broke off to ask abruptly, "Another thing, Ross, right here before I forget. The day you left, you remember Uncle Jake was sick and you went down to get dinner and left me in the tunnel?"
"Yes."
"Well, only a few minutes after you left I looked out and you, as I supposed then, stood in the mouth of the tunnel––"
"Nope, ’twas Weston," interrupted Ross. "He said he went up there first. He came to the shack from that direction."
"Then he got a squint at the work and the dynamite and your assistant right then! I thought it was queer I didn’t get an answer when I yelled to know if you had dinner ready. But just as I spoke, the figure took a sneak, and I supposed you had just stopped a bit to look things over."
"Weston was attending to that, evidently," retorted Ross promptly. "But now let’s see–you’ve brought the happenings up to to-day, haven’t you?"
"Not quite," Leslie answered. "I’ll be there in a minute, though. Yesterday I got as uneasy as Weimer over your not getting back, and Miller, or Weston, I mean, not coming as he promised. I confess I was in a blue funk by afternoon, and I saw things were shaping for another storm. I went slipping and sliding out beside the dump a dozen times where I could look over to Soapweed Ledge while Uncle Jake tramped around outside the shack continually watching for you."
"Poor Uncle Jake!" muttered Ross stirring uneasily.
"Well, that brings me to to-day," Leslie began after a pause. "I was down beside the dump looking for you about eleven o’clock this morning when I saw him coming over the Ledge–Weston, I mean. Same goggles, same cap drawn down over his ears, same outfit except the game pouch. I noticed as soon as he came near that the pouch was gone. Tell you what, Ross, I made tracks down the trail, got my snow-shoes on and went to meet him. I would have hurried to meet a Hottentot! Uncle Jake stayed behind jabbering in German, and fairly dancing up and down in his excitement because you had not come with Weston."
Ross, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms, staring at Leslie, saw in a flash the latter as he had appeared at Sagehen Roost, overbearing and dictatorial. Then he saw him running across the lonely valley of Meadow Creek eager to meet any one on a fraternal footing.