“Those are three other little mining-camps, all tributary to the smelters at San Remo, and all producing refractory ores like the mines of Sulphide. My! Joe!” I exclaimed, as my thoughts reverted to Tom Connor and his late core-boring failure. “What a great thing a good vein of lead ore would be! Better than a gold mine!”
“I expect it would. Poor old Tom! He bears his disappointment pretty well, doesn’t he?”
“He certainly does. He says, now, that he’s going to stick to straightforward mining and leave prospecting alone; but he’s said that every year for the past ten years at least, and if there’s anything certain about Tom it is that when spring comes and he finds himself once more with money in his pocket, he’ll be off again hunting for his lead-mine.”
“Sure to. Well, Phil, let’s sit down somewhere and eat our lunch. We mustn’t stay here too long.”
“All right. Here’s a good place behind this big rock. It will shelter us from the east wind, which has a decided edge to it up here.”
For half an hour we sat comfortably in the sun eating our lunch, all around us space and silence, when Joe, rising to his feet, gave vent to a soft whistle.
“Phil,” said he, “we must be off. No time to waste. Look eastward.”
I jumped up. A wonderful change had taken place. The view of the plains was completely cut off by masses of soft cloud, which, coming from the east, struck the mountain-side about two thousand feet below us and were swiftly and softly drifting up to where we stood.
“Yes, we must be off,” said I. “It won’t do to be caught up here in the clouds: it would be dangerous getting down over the rocks. And besides that, it might turn cold and come on to snow. Let us be off at once.”
It was fortunate we did so, for, though we traveled as fast as we dared, the cloud, coming at first in thin whisps and then in dense masses, enveloped us before we reached timber-line, and the difficulty we experienced in covering the small intervening space showed us how risky it would have been had the cloud caught us while we were still on the summit of the ridge.