“Blind Man’s Pass!” exclaimed the two boys.
“Blind Man’s Pass,” replied the policeman. “At last a reality! Wonderful! I can scarcely credit my senses. Beautiful, isn’t it, Dick?”
Dick nodded. “I was never more astonished in my life. No wonder the entrance to the pass is so hard to find. Even now I doubt if I could go back eight or ten miles and find my way here again.”
A strange far-away look flecked the eyes of the policeman. He glanced up at the receding walls of the valley. Up, up, up, hundreds, thousands of feet through an amber haze of sunlight, streaked here and there with bright tints and shades. Magic seemed to touch everything. Dick was obsessed with a sense of unreality, of majestic heights, of vague distances.
Along the comparatively level floor of the valley lay only a few inches of snow. The tracks of the pack-train could easily be seen. They were not difficult to follow. There was no danger now of wandering afield and losing their bearings. The mountains shut them in—completely encompassed them. Neither they nor the outlaws could clamber up the unscalable heights.
Their onward trek had assumed something of the nature of an outing, a mysterious adventure through unfamiliar scenes. In the hours that passed never once did Dick lose interest in his surroundings. Sleep had revived him and his spirits had risen accordingly. He and his two companions hurried on, conversing as gaily as if they were going to a holiday festival.
Day ended with startling suddenness. But the gloomy, threatening darkness of the preceding night did not come. It was more radiant, softly nocturnal—a half-moon riding across a bedecked, star-sprinkled sky. Crackling northern lights. Clear, crisp, exhilarating air. The only obscurities lay along the shadowed walls of the valley, in the deep recesses and fissures of the rocks.
Day after day, they fared westward amid scenes of grandeur and magnificence. Never did they approach closer than a mile or two to the outlaws. At night very often they could see twinkling campfires ahead. Frequently, on clear days, they perceived the pack-train itself—tiny black dots, crawling like ants over sugar or white sand. Once, climbing to the commanding position of a huge crag, for nearly an hour Dick watched the progress of the cavalcade.
Outside of these minor incidents, there was little of importance to distinguish one day from another. Fortunately, there had been no marked change in the weather. They were forced to conserve their supplies, but now and again ptarmigan were secured, making a much appreciated change in the monotony of their diet. On the morning of the tenth day the valley widened out and by evening they had made their way out of the pass into a country of rugged and broken contours. Soon the forest encroached. Then the topography of the land became less undulating, less forbidding. In the breath of the wind they could smell the unmistakable tang of the Pacific. It was shortly after this that a most mysterious incident occurred.
It was afternoon, of a calm, sunshiny day, and only a few hours previous they had picked up a well-marked trail, leading to the westward. The pack-train—they had good reason to believe—was less than a mile ahead; and Dick and his two companions were moving along slowly, when, unexpectedly to their right, scarcely a hundred yards back from the trail, they perceived a log cabin. Upon closer approach, they saw that the place was inhabited. A thin spiral of smoke curled up from the mud chimney. Outside, stretched on convenient drying-frames, were pelts of various wild animals.