“Hounds!” he murmured in despair. “Unhitched from the sled. They’ll catch me. I can’t escape them.” He stared wildly to right and left as he ran, but saw no way of escape.
After Johnny Thompson had left camp in search of the Bolshevik band that eventful morning, he was no more than out of sight when a slight figure crept from a snow-buried pup tent to the right of the cabin and went gliding away up the hill in the moonlight. It was Pant. Rapidly he scaled the snow-packed hillside. Arriving at last at the foot of the rocky cliff, he began a minute examination of those cliffs. Once he climbed to a dizzy height by clinging to the crags. It was a cat-like feat which very few persons could perform, but he did it with consummate ease. At another time he dropped flat on his stomach and crept into a broad crevice between the rocks. He was gone for a long time, but finally appeared grimy with dirt and empty-handed.
“‘Money in the rock,’” he murmured. “‘Money in the rock for you.’”
Then, as if discouraged with his quest, he turned and started down the hill.
He had covered half the distance when something caught his eye. A black spot, the size of a baseball, had bounced mysteriously past him.
In a twinkling, he was away in mad pursuit. Slipping, sliding, bounding over the glistening surface, turning a somersault to land on his feet and race ahead, he very soon came up with the thing where it had lodged against a protruding flat rock.
His fingers grasped it eagerly. Here was a third message from the unknown one. Perhaps this would explain all.