As they passed the lower levels game vanished. Only once in two days did they see a rabbit. Then it escaped into the brush.
At the end of three days, after skirting many a spring-born freshet and creeping about a score of cliffs, they arrived at the base of a mountain, the lowest of all the range, but startling in its whiteness and immensity. There, sore footed and weary, they built another campfire and sat down to a meal of steaming coffee and frozen berries.
The girl looked at Johnny. There was a question in her eyes. “Dare we try the mountain?”
“It is three days’ travel back to the land of game,” he replied. “Can it be worse ahead? Will he turn back?”
He looked at the grizzled old Scot, who as ever sat dozing by the fire.
“He will not.”
“Will he live to—to see the other side of the mountain?”
“We can only hope.”
For a long time after that they sat there in silence. What were the girl’s thoughts? Johnny would gladly have known. As for himself, he was thinking of the possibility of sudden tragedy for the old Scot and of their battle to win their way back to the haunts of civilized man.
“What a burial place for such a man!” he thought to himself. “A whole unmolested mountain for a tomb!