"About the same as the average and ordinary mortal," rejoined Steele sarcastically. "But you’ll probably have a good many chances of finding out for yourself. You’ll be glad to see anybody, even young Jones!"
At last, after threading their way between spurs and over bowlders and through valleys, they emerged on the other side of Crosby, and found themselves in a bowl the sides of which were formed by mountains so high and grim that Ross gasped for the breath that he felt the peaks would eventually shut off.
It was a queer and uncomfortable feeling, this which the mountains gave him, a sense of being shut in and overpowered and helpless.
The peaks on all sides were snow-heaped; but the valley, protected as it was, showed patches of black earth. Sage-brush with scrub spruce and hemlock were the only vegetation of the valley visible, but the sides of the mountains showed a good growth of hemlock and pine trees reaching to timber line only a few hundred feet up.
On the left at the foot of Crosby–whose back looked as high to Ross as its face, despite the fact that he was half a mile higher here than in the cañon–two columns of smoke were ascending from two clusters of hemlocks a quarter of a mile apart. Toward these, Steele, drawing in his horse, pointed.
"The first is your layout," he called back over his shoulder, "the other is the McKenzies’!"
"And where is Wilson’s?" asked Ross, eagerly.
Steele faced in the opposite direction and indicated a narrow trail that led to the right, disappearing in a forest of scrub pine which filled the ravine between two of the mountains that formed the rim of the bowl. "Follow that trail and you’ll reach ’em. But ten to one, before you can do it they’ll follow the trail this way and reach you!"
"I hope so!" exclaimed Ross in a heartfelt tone.
A few moments later he was face to face with Weimer.