"Did you ever stop to think they may come up through this brush?" said Molly, on whom the silence and the sad gray stubs on either hand were beginning to tell.
"No," he answered, "I didn't, because they can't. The farther down you go the worse it gets. They'd never get through. Not with hosses. We're all right."
"Are we?" She stood up in her stirrups, and looked down through a vista between the stubs.
They had reached the top of the mountain. It was a saddle-backed mountain, and they were at the outer edge of the eastern hump. Far below was a narrow valley running north and south. It was a valley without trees or stream and through it a string of dots were slipping to the north.
"Are we all right?" she persisted. "Look down there."
At this he turned his head and craned his neck.
"I guess," he said, stepping out, "we'd better boil this kettle a li'l faster."
She made no comment, but always she looked down the mountain side and watched, when the stubs gave her the opportunity, that ominous string of dots. She had never been hunted before.
They crossed the top of the mountain, keeping to the ridge of rock, and started down the northern slope. Here they passed out of the burned-over area of underbrush and stubs and scuffed through brushless groves of fir and spruce where no grass grew and not a ray of sunshine struck the ground and the wind soughed always mournfully.
But here and there were comparatively open spaces, grassy, drenched with sunshine, and sparsely sprinkled with lovely mountain maples and solitary yellow pines. In the wider open spaces they could see over the tops of the trees below them and catch glimpses of the way they must go.