"The gun," interrupted Ross. "Did you think of the gun?"
"Not much I didn’t! That was Weston. Just as we were starting off he turned back and said:
"’See here, young feller. Doc said as how ye was t’ bring his gun along and mebby he could bring down a mountain sheep as we come back. They is a lot of them animals over with us.’"
So the two had turned back and Leslie strapped Ross’s gun across his shoulders. He carried the ammunition. Weston insisted on taking all of it along as he and his partner had run short, and Ross had promised them a share of his! Then they had started out, and, screened by the veil of gently falling snow, entered on the same tortuous, winding, upward trail that Ross and Weston had taken a few days previously.
"And all the way," Leslie continued, "whenever the trail let us walk together, he was telling me a long yarn about the day you and he had spent chasing that elk whose meat we were going after. I listened, Ross, with my mouth opened half the time, and wished a dozen times, if I did once, that I had been with you.
"Well, as the afternoon passed, the storm became heavier, and part of the way we couldn’t see a dozen feet before us, and finally I think Weston himself was uncertain of our way although he said he wasn’t. It must have been about four o’clock when we came to the head of the ledge. Weston searched and groped along until he came to a tree where a rope was already tied.
"’It’s the one I used fer Doc and me,’" he explained and slung it over the cliff.
"He had been hauling the sled along, while all I had to carry was the gun and ammunition. Now he said that I had better leave my snow-shoes on top of the cliff and tie the end of the rope around my waist and he would let me down to the ledge. That I was to kick clear of snow and then go up the cañon and get you to come down and help heave the sled over and get it down to the cañon. He said you would know better than I how to do that. He kept giving me directions about where to find the cabin, for the snow had thickened until we couldn’t see the ledge, to say nothing of the cañon. You see, Ross, I’ll confess I was too nervous about going over into space attached to that rope to think that his proceeding was queer. I just didn’t question a thing, but shut my eyes and went over. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why my snow-shoes, instead of that gun, weren’t tied on my shoulders. Well, I struck the ledge and untied the rope and felt my way along that ticklish shelf until the squall lifted and then–you know the rest. If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget how I felt when that rope was drawn up and he yelled down that I was to tell you I was in the same boat that you were!"
It was late and Leslie was too tired to talk longer. Ross gave him the bunk and, waiting only long enough to fill the stove with wood, close the draughts and blow out the candles, wrapped up in a blanket and lay down beside the stove, his coat for a pillow. He did not fall asleep at once, but lay staring up at the flicker of firelight dancing about on the mud-chinked logs overhead.
After all his planning and working, he thought, his mission in the mountains was doomed to failure. The claims would pass into the McKenzies’ hands, and, besides, he would have missed one year of the preparation for the work he had chosen. He rolled over and half groaned.