“But look!” he exclaimed. “There’s something moving down there. Here, tell me what it is. It seems to be marooned on that little island in midstream. Water’s overflowing the ice. Water must be rising. May flood the island.”
The girl took the glasses and with steady gaze studied the spot he pointed out.
As for Gordon Duncan, he stood there erect, motionless, seeing all that lay before him, mountains, rivers, hills and valleys. He appeared to search for that which he did not see.
“Should be to the right down there,” he mumbled once. “Can it be that I have mistaken the pass? No. That could not be. Yet if it were there one would see a curl of smoke. It is growing dusk. Time for the evening meal.” He shaded his eyes to look again.
“There is something moving there,” the girl said to Johnny. “I can’t make out what it is. Might be caribou; might be Indians. Can’t tell. In the morning light we can tell.”
“Indians.” The thought gave Johnny a start. Even today in this wild out-of-the-way corner of the world, Indians were not to be trusted too far. In a fit of anger, in a moment of greed, they might kill. And who would be the wiser?
“We can’t camp here,” Johnny said as a cold wind, sweeping across the perpetual snow of the mountain side chilled him to the bone. “Have to go on down. May find a sheltering ledge.” He slung his pack over his shoulder, then motioned the older man to guide them on.
“The way is down,” Gordon Duncan said huskily. “That’s all I know. Young man, your foot is surer than mine. Lead on.”
So Johnny took up the task of trail blazer, and even as his eyes worked out a passage here and a detour there, his mind went back to that day when he first met Faye Duncan, the day on which they killed their first caribou. Woven with his thoughts of that which had happened then were wonders regarding the creatures moving about on the river island, and Gordon Duncan’s purpose in bringing them on this wild chase into the unknown.
An hour later in a sheltered nook they pitched their small tents and built a crackling fire of scrub fir trees. Over the fire they cooked the last of their goat’s meat, and boiled coffee.