Once, creeping through tall dead grass of a year’s standing, they came upon a flock of gray ducks that had come all the way from the southland.
As he smiled over the breast of a fine duck that evening Johnny’s face suddenly sobered. He had bitten upon something that had nearly cost him a tooth.
“A shot,” he said as he produced a mashed bit of lead. “Someone shot at him way down there where there is no ice and snow, and he brought this, a message from another land.”
For a moment as he sat dreaming, eyes half closed, he thought of himself as a young native of the land, the old man the last patriarch of his tribe and the girl the last link of a vanishing race.
“Huh!” he smiled as he wakened from his revery. “Strange world! In a month we will be with white men, living as they live.” But would they?
With all the hunting and their keen enjoyment of the spring, they did not neglect the trail. Each day brought them nearer to the range of snow blown mountains. Each hour hastened the time when they must try the pass.
Sometimes at night by the campfire they spoke of it in awed whispers. At other times, under bright midday skies, they laughingly talked of the long slide they would take when they reached the other side. How little they knew of that which lay before them.
Gordon Duncan thought only of Timmie and his green gold. Faye Duncan lived most for the care and protection of the kindly old man she loved more than her own life. Johnny dreamed strange dreams of gold, fortune, and a dark haired handsome Scotch girl. At times he wondered why they had feared to meet a fellow human being. That wonder was fading. Growing ever stronger was his desire to solve the mystery of Timmie and his green gold.
“Just over the mountains, and we’ll know,” he told himself many times.
So at last they reached the foothills of those vast and silent mountains, and their troubles began.