They rode on in silence, but did not overtake the others until they reached the timber lot where they found the party waiting. With what Dorothea had just told him in his mind, Larry could not help a keen searching of Kathleen's face. She was quietly chatting with the young German, with face serene and quite untouched with anything but the slightest animation. “She is not worrying over anything,” said Larry to himself. Then he turned and looked upon the face of the young man at her side. A shock of surprise, of consternation, thrilled him. The young man's face was alight with an intensity of eagerness, of desire, that startled Larry and filled him with a new feeling of anxiety, indeed of dismay.
“Oh, you people are slow,” cried Nora. “What is keeping you? Come along or we shall be late. Shall we go through the woods straight to the dump, or shall we go around?”
“Let's go around,” cried Kathleen. “Do you know I have not been around for ever so long?”
“Yes,” said Larry, “let's go around by Nora's mine.”
“Nora's mine!” exclaimed Ernest. “Do you know I've heard about that mine a great deal but I have never seen Nora's mine?”
“Come along, then,” said Nora, “but there's almost no trail and we shall have to hurry while we can. There's only a cow track.”
“Move along then,” said her brother; “show us the way and we will follow. Go on, Ernest.”
But Ernest apparently had difficulty with his broncho so that he was found at the rear of the line with Kathleen immediately in front of him. The cow trail led out of the coolee over a shoulder of a wooded hill and down into a ravine whose sharp sides made the riding even to those experienced westerners a matter of difficulty, in places of danger. At the bottom of the ravine a little torrent boiled and foamed on its way to join Wolf Willow Creek a mile further down. After an hour's struggle with the brushwood and fallen timber the party was halted by a huge spruce tree which had fallen fair across the trail.
“Where now, boss?” cried Larry to Nora, who from her superior knowledge of the ground, had been leading the party.
“This is something new,” answered Nora. “I think we should cross the water and try to break through to the left around the top of the tree.”