Roger stared violently.
"B-but——" he began.
"No 'buts' about it. I'm running this outfit. Look here, Roger—I guess you don't mind my calling you by your first name—I'm pretty well fixed. My people are dead; they were killed in the earthquake in San Francisco. I'm my own boss, though I am only eighteen, and I came up to Alaska this summer to get a holiday before I go to the university next Christmas. There isn't a thing I'd like better than a trip over the Snowies, and if we're smart we'll do it and be back before winter hits us. Are you agreeable?"
"I don't know how to thank you," said Roger brokenly.
"Then don't worry to try, old man," replied Nick comfortably. "Just fix up a mouthful of grub, and give me a bunk. We ought to start before sun-up to-morrow morning."
"Seems to me, Rube, you were a bit out in your reckoning," said Nick as early one morning, ten days later, he looked out of the tent and found the landscape white with snow.
Rube shook his grizzled head.
"'Tain't that altogether, boss. I reckon we're a matter of four thousand feet higher than your summer camp. Winter comes here a sight sooner than down in them river valleys. Howsomever, it ain't deep, and it'll melt when the sun gets good an' strong."
All that day the little party of three struggled up a narrow valley that wound ever upward into the heart of a maze of great snow peaks. Over and over again tall cliffs loomed up in front, and it seemed as if they could go no further. But always there appeared some fresh opening, and bit by bit they won their way upward toward the summit of the range.