THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND

"'DESERTED!' JAKE SAID SHORTLY"—Page 282

THE BOY RANCHERS
OF PUGET SOUND

BY
HAROLD BINDLOSS

Author of "Alton of Somasco," "Winston of the Prairie," "Lorimer of the Northwest," "Thurston of Orchard Valley," etc.

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1910, By
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND

CHAPTER I
FRANK GOES WEST

It was the middle of an afternoon in May. An old side-wheeler was steaming south toward Puget Sound across the land-locked waters that lie between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington. A little astern on one hand Mount Baker lifted its heights of eternal snow. On the other, and a little ahead, the Olympians rose white and majestic; and between, vast, dim forests rolled down to the ruffled, blue water. It seemed to Frank Whitney, sitting on the steamer's upper deck in the lee of her smokestack, that it was a wild and wonderfully beautiful country he had reached at last; for since leaving Vancouver, British Columbia, they had steamed past endless rocks and woods, while island after island faded into the smoke trail down the seething wake and great white mountains opened out, changed their shapes, and closed in on one another as the steamer went by. He had, however, not come there to admire the scenery, and as he watched the wonderful panorama unroll itself he looked back upon the troubles that had befallen him since he set out from Boston a little less than a year ago.

When he left that city he was but sixteen, and was, as he had cause to realize during the following twelve months, merely an average American boy, with a certain amount of alertness, self-reliance and common sense; though he might, perhaps, have had more of these desirable qualities, had he not been a trifle spoiled by his widowed mother before he went to Gorton school. He had, quite apart from his lessons, learned a few useful things there which probably he would never have learned at home, but he had been suddenly recalled, and his mother had informed him that it was now impossible for him to enter the profession for which he had been intended. Frank did not understand all the reasons for this, but he knew that they were connected with the fall in value of some railroad stock and the failure of a manufacturing company in which his mother held shares. She had, as she pointed out, his two younger sisters to provide for, and he must earn his living at once.

Frank found this much harder than he had expected. The subjects in which he excelled did not seem to be of the least use to business men, and the fact that he could play several games moderately well did not seem to count at all. There were people who were ready to give him a trial, but they seemed singularly unwilling to pay him enough to live in a way that he considered fitting; and this somewhat astonished as well as troubled him. In the end, a relative, who said that a young man with any grit and snap had better chances in the West, found him a position with a big milling company in Minneapolis. Frank accepted the position, but soon found it not much to his liking. The people he met were not like his Boston friends. They were mostly Germans and Scandinavians, and their ways were not those to which he had been accustomed. What was worse, they hustled him in the milling company's offices, and instead of teaching him the business kept him busy licking stamps, copying letters and answering telephones, which did not seem to him a fitting occupation for an intellectual lad.

He bore it, nevertheless, because he had to, until one day there came a climax, when a clerk who had bullied him all along assigned to him a particularly disagreeable task which was really outside his duties. In return, in a fit of very foolish anger, Frank screwed the clerk's new hat down tight in a copying-press, and it happened that the secretary came upon the scene during the trouble that followed. The secretary had an unpleasant temper, and when he walked out of the general office Frank sat down at his desk boiling with indignation and almost stupefied. There was, however, not the least doubt that he was fired.

He spent a very dismal evening afterward, for one thing, at least, was clear—he could not go home to Boston and become a burden on his mother. But the flour trade was bad in Minneapolis just then, and business in St. Paul did not seem much better, so eventually he found employment in the offices of a milling company in Winnipeg. He suffered from the extreme cold during the winter there. The cold of Massachusetts, as he discovered, is very different from the iron frost which shuts down on the Canadian prairie and never slackens its grip for months together. The clothing he had brought from Boston was not warm enough, and his small earnings would only provide him with shelter in the cheapest quarters. Still, he held on until trade grew slack in the early spring and he was turned adrift again. This time he felt that he had had enough of business. He had heard and read of men who burrowed for treasure in the snow-clad ranges, broke wild horses, and cleared the forests, out in the farthest West. There was a romance in that life surpassing anything that seemed likely to be got out of the addition of flour invoices or the licking of stamps, and he wrote a letter to an old friend of his dead father, who lived on a ranch near Puget Sound. It was some time before he got an answer telling him rather tersely to come along.

Frank started the day after he received it, and was now, he supposed, within a short distance of his journey's end. He had never seen his father's friend, and knew nothing of what he would be required to do at the ranch, though he fancied that all that was necessary could readily be learned by an intelligent lad. In this, however, he was wrong.

Suddenly the steamer's whistle hurled a great blast out across the waters, and, looking around, Frank saw, not far ahead, a long point strewn with rocks and streaked with wisps of pines. There was, however, no sign of life on it, and he turned to a deck-hand who strode by.

"Can that be Bannington's?" he asked.

"Yes," the man informed him. "I guess that's just what it is."

"But there's nobody about," objected Frank.

The deck-hand grinned.

"Did you expect it was like Seattle or Port Townsend? There's a store to the place, and they've got a post-office back among the rocks. We lay off and whistle, and if there's no sign of a shore boat she goes on again."

He went forward with a jump as a man came out of the pilot house with a pair of glasses in his hand.

"Run up slow," he ordered. "There's nothing coming yet."

The big side-wheels beat more slowly and the whistle called again, but there was still only the ruffled blue water with white flecks on it and the rapidly rising pines. Frank watched them anxiously, for he had only about two dollars in his pocket, and it seemed quite possible that he might be carried on to Seattle, in which case he had not the faintest notion as to how he was to get back. It was quite certain that he could not pay any more steamboat fares.

A minute or two later the man with the glasses raised his hand as a sail crept out around the point, and the big wheels stopped. The strip of canvas grew into a gaff mainsail and a jib; the hull beneath it emerged at intervals from the little tumbling seas; and it became apparent to Frank for the first time that it was blowing rather hard. The sail seemed to be dripping and he could see the spray flying about the shapeless figure at the helm. Then the steamboat officer motioned to him.

"Are you getting off here?" he asked.

Frank answered rather dubiously that this was his intention.

"Then you'd better get down on to the wheel-case bracings with your grip. I don't know how they're going to take you off, but I guess they'll shoot her up head to wind and you'll have to jump."

Frank got out on the guard-framing on the after side of the wheel and watched the boat drive by, swung up on a little sea some distance away. Half of her hull seemed to be under water, though the fore part of it was hove up streaming into the air. She rolled wildly with her big mainsail squared right out and the jib, which hung slack, dripping water. Then she came round and headed for the steamer, lying down all slanted to one side, while the water sluiced along her lee deck, and Frank made out a boy crouching under the sail with a rope in his hand. It seemed to him that the boat must inevitably ram the steamer and smash in her bows. Then a hail reached him.

"Hello, pilot house! Shove her astern soon as we're clear of you!"

Somebody shouted an answer, and the steamer swung out, lifting a row of wet plates out of the water and burying them again with a gurgling splash. A glance around showed Frank a deck-hand standing behind him with a long, spiked pole and a crowd of passengers leaning over the rails of the deck above. How he was to get into the boat he did not know, for the thing was beginning to look difficult. Then there was another shout from the figure at her helm:

"That you, Whitney?"

Frank waved his hand in answer, hastily grabbing up the small bag which contained his few possessions. The wheel-casing sank again into a ridge of frothing brine which swirled about his feet, and he felt that it would be a good deal wiser to climb back to the deck above and go on to Seattle. This, however, was out of the question, even if there had not been so many passengers looking on, and it was comforting to remember that he could swim a little. The next moment the deck-hand touched his arm.

"I'll sling your grip aboard her as she shoots," he said. "Then jump, and stick to anything you get your hands on."

The boat was now only seven or eight yards away, nearer the steamer's stern, but as Frank gazed at her she suddenly swayed upright with a frantic thrashing of canvas, and shot forward head to wind beneath the vessel's side. The next moment his bag went hurtling through the air, and he heard the deck-hand shout something in his ear. Then he set his lips and jumped.

He struck something hard with his knees, and was conscious of a sudden chill as the brine washed over one leg, but he had his hands clenched tight on a strip of wet wood, and somebody seized him by the shoulder. Making a determined effort he dragged himself up on the narrow side deck, and fell in a heap into the bottom of the boat. When he scrambled to his feet again the big side-wheel was splashing amidst a welter of churned-up foam as the steamer pushed away from them, and, in the boat, the boy he had already noticed was tugging desperately at a rope.

"Get hold and heave!" he cried.

Frank did as the boy directed. Then the helmsman waved his hand.

"Not too flat! Belay at that! Get down here aft, both of you!"

Frank staggered aft a pace or two, and sitting down breathless and dripping gazed about him. The boat looked a good deal bigger than she had appeared from the steamer, and, as a matter of fact, she was a half-decked sloop of about twenty-four feet in length. Just then she was slanted well down on one side, with the water foaming along her depressed deck and showers of spray beating into her over her weather bow, while the jib above her bowsprit every now and then plunged into the short, white-topped seas. There seemed to be some water inside her, for it washed up above the floorings at every heave. In a few moments Frank had recovered his breath sufficiently to look around at his companions. One was a boy of about his own age who smiled at him. He had a bronzed skin and a kindly expression, and looked lean and wiry.

"You're Frank Whitney?" asked the boy.

Frank acknowledged that this was his name, and the other proceeded to introduce himself and his companion.

"I'm Harry Oliver, and, as you're going to stay with us, we've got to hit it off together."

Then he turned and indicated the ruddy-faced, red-haired man who held the helm.

"This is Jake, one of the smartest choppers and trailers on the Pacific Slope. There aren't many of the boys who could have picked you off that steamboat in a breeze of wind as he did."

"Oh, pshaw!" said the helmsman with a grin.

Neither of them had said anything striking in the way of welcome, but Frank felt quickly at ease with them. As a rule, the new acquaintances he had made in business farther east seemed to expect him to recognize their superiority, or, at least, to understand that it was a privilege to be admitted into their society. His present companions, however, somehow made it plain that as long as he was willing to be commonly civil there was no reason why they should not get on well together, for which he was thankful, though he felt that any attempt to put on airs with them would probably lead to trouble.

"How far is it to your father's ranch?" he asked presently.

"Twelve miles," responded Harry. "With a head wind like this one, it means from eighteen to twenty-four miles' sailing. It depends, for one thing, on Jake's steering."

"Thirty, sure," broke in the helmsman, "if you had the tiller."

"How's that?" asked Frank.

"Know anything about sailing?"

Frank confessed his ignorance, and Jake nodded to Harry.

"Show him," he said. "He has got to learn and you can teach the fellow who'll allow he doesn't know anything. The kind we've no use for is the one that knows too much."

Harry laid a wet finger on the hove-up weather deck.

"Now," he began, "a boat or a ship under sail can go straight to the place she's bound for as long as she has the wind anywhere from right behind her to a little forward on her side. In fact, as she'll lie up within a few points of the wind, there's only a small segment of the circle you can't sail her straight into."

He traced a circle on the deck and then placed his finger over about a quarter of the circumference of it.

"She won't go there."

"But supposing you want to?"

"Then, if the wind's ahead, you have to beat." He drew two lines across the circle at right angles to each other and laid his finger at the end of one. "Say we're here at north and the cove we're going to lies about south. Well, you get your sheets in flat—same as we have them now—and you sail up this way, at this angle to the wind." He ran a slanting line across the circle until it touched the rim. "That brings you here; then you come round, and go off at the same angle on the opposite tack, which brings you right up to the cove. You can do it in two long tacks, or—and it's the same thing—in a lot of little ones, each at the same angle to the wind; but how many degrees there are in that angle and when you get there depends on how your sails are cut and how smart you are at steering her."

Frank understood the gist of it, but there were one or two difficulties, and he was not ashamed to ask a question:

"What makes her go slantways against the wind? Why doesn't it blow her back, or sideways?"

"It does," Jake broke in dryly, "if you don't sail her right, or it blows hard enough."

"What makes a kite go up slantways against, or on, the wind, which is the same thing in sailing?" continued Harry. "Because with the wind and the string both pulling her, that's the line of least resistance." He paused, and added deprecatingly, "I was at school at Tacoma and as I'd a notion I might take up surveying, they pounded some facts into me that made this kind of thing easier to get hold of. A boat goes ahead on the wind because, considering the shape of her, it's the easiest way; and this is what stops her going off sideways to lee." He kicked a high narrow box which ran along the middle of the boat. "It holds the centerboard—a big plate that's down deep in the water now. Before the wind could shove her off sideways—and it does a little—it would have to press that flat plate sideways through the water."

Frank made a sign of comprehension.

"That's about the size of it," said Jake. "Now I guess it would be more useful if you got some of the water out of her."

Harry, who explained that there was something wrong with the pump, pulled up one of the flooring boards and invited Frank to dip a bucket into the cavity and hand it up to him when it was full. Frank endeavored to do so, but found it difficult, for the water which surged to and fro as the sloop plunged left the bottom of the hole almost dry one moment and the next came splashing back so rapidly that before he could get a fair scoop with the bucket it had generally gone again. Besides, the motion every now and then flung him off his knees; but he toiled on with his head down for nearly half an hour, when a horrible nausea mastered him and he staggered to the foam-swept lee coaming. For the next ten minutes he felt desperately unhappy, and when he turned around again there was a grin on the faces of his companions.

"She'll do," said Harry. "You want to look to weather and get the wind on your face. That's the best way to keep a hold on your dinner."

Frank suddenly remembered that he had had no dinner. He had had only a dollar or two left in his possession, and after considering the steamboat tariff he had decided to dispense with the meal. In spite of this fact and the unpleasant sensations he felt, he was conscious of a certain satisfaction with his new surroundings. The seasickness would pass, and grappling with the winds of heaven and the charging seas seemed a finer thing than adding up the price of flour or sticking stamps on letters. Here man's skill, nerve and quickness were pitted against the variable elements, and Frank had a suspicion—which, as it happened, was quite justified—that if Jake made a blunder the next white-topped comber would come foaming across the bows of the craft. It was only his cool judgment and ready hand on the tiller that swung her safely over them.

Raising himself a little he glanced ahead. The steamer and her smoke trail had vanished some time ago, and the white Olympians had faded, too. Evening was drawing on. The sky was now a dismal, dingy gray, and the leaden-blue water was streaked with flecks and curls of foam. It seemed to him that the sea was steadily getting higher, and there was not the least doubt that the sloop was slanting more sharply and throwing the spray all over her.

"It looks bad up yonder, doesn't it?" he queried in anxious tones.

"I allow we might have more wind by and by," Jake answered laconically. "Seems to me she has about all the sail she can stand up to on her now."

He had scarcely finished speaking when a comber curled over at its top rose up close ahead, and the boat went into it to the mast. Part of it poured over the forward head ledge into the open well, and the rest sluiced foaming down the slanted deck to lee, through which she lurched clear, with the water splashing and gurgling inside her.

"We'll heave another reef down right away," said Jake. "Get forward, Harry, and claw that headsail off her."

The boy seized a wet sail that lay in the well, and as he crawled forward with it the sloop rose almost upright, with her mainsail banging and thrashing furiously. When he loosed a rope the jib ran partly down its stay, and then jammed, filling out and emptying with sudden shocks that shook the stout spar beneath it and the reeling mast. Harry, however, crawled out on the bowsprit with his feet braced against a wire—a lean, dripping figure that dipped in the tumbling seas—and Frank, seeing that he was struggling vainly with the sail, scrambled forward to help him, sick as he was. Water flowed about his knees on the plunging deck, flying ropes whipped him, and the spray was hurled into his face, but he could think of no reason why the Western boy should do more than he could. He crouched down, hauling savagely on a rope at which Harry pointed, and by and by the sail fell upon both of them. They dragged it in, made it fast, and set a smaller one in place of it, after which they floundered aft to where Jake was struggling with the mainsail.

He had hauled down what Frank afterward learned was the leach of it, and was now standing with his toes on the coaming and his chest upon the boom, pulling down the hard, drenched canvas and tying the little bits of rope that hung in a row from it around the boom.

"Hustle!" he shouted. "Get those reef-points in!"

Frank took his place with his companion, and tried not to look at the frothing water close beneath him as he leaned out on the jerking boom. For the most part, the big spar lay fairly quiet, but now and then the canvas above it shook itself with a bang. It cost him a strenuous effort to drag each handful of it down in turn, and he discovered afterward that he had broken two of his nails. He lost his breath, the perspiration started from every pore in his skin, and he was sick and dizzy, but he managed to hold on. At last it was finished, and soon afterward Jake, driving the sloop on her course again, turned to Harry.

"She'll make nothing of it against this breeze," he said. "We'll up-helm and look for shelter under Tourmalin."

Harry, bracing himself against the strain, let a rope run through the clattering blocks, the bow swung around, and the motion became a little easier.

"We'll be snug beneath the pines in an hour," said Jake, nodding reassuringly.

Frank found the time quite long enough. He was wet and dizzy, and the way the big frothing ridges came tumbling up out of the growing darkness was rather terrifying. They heaved themselves up above the boat, and every time that one foamed about her she slanted alarmingly over to leeward. At last, when it had grown quite dark, a shadowy blur that grew into a wisp of tall pines rose up ahead, and a minute or two later there was an almost bewildering change from the rolling and plunging as the sloop ran into smooth water. Her sails dropped, the anchor chain rattled out, and by and by they were all sitting in the little cabin, which was scarcely three feet high, and Jake was cramming bark and kerosene rags into the stove.

Half an hour later Frank forced himself to eat a little canned beef and drink some coffee, and then Harry told him he could lie down on what seemed to be a moderately dry sail. He had scarcely done so when he fell asleep. Jake, who had been watching him, turned the lantern so that the light fell on his face.

"He was mighty sick," he observed, a kindly smile lighting up his rugged features, "but he stayed with it through the reefin'. Your father should make something of him. I guess he'll do."

CHAPTER II
THE BUSH

Frank awoke a little before daylight, feeling considerably better. The nausea and dizziness had gone, and the sloop seemed to be lying almost still, which was a relief to him. Then he noticed by the light of a lamp that his companions' places were empty, and presently he heard them talking in the well. Crawling out through the narrow doorway, he stood up shivering in the coldness of the dawn.

There were dim black trees and shadowy rocks close in front of him, with a white wash about the latter, for a smooth swell worked in around a point from open water. He could hear the rumble of the surf upon the reefs, and though he could scarcely feel a breath of wind upon his face the wailing of the black pines suggested that it was blowing still. He could smell the clean resinous scent of them and it seemed to him that they were singing wild, barbaric songs. Afterward, when he knew them better, he learned that the pines and their kin, the cedars and balsams and redwoods, are never silent altogether. Even when their fragrance steals out heavy and sweet as honey under the fierce sunshine of a windless day, one can hear faint elfin whisperings high up among their somber spires. Then he saw that Jake was standing on the side deck, apparently gazing at the white surf about the end of the point.

"No," he mused, "she wouldn't face it. The breeze hasn't fallen any, and the sea'll be steeper. Guess you'd better leave me here, and take the Indian trail."

Harry agreed with this.

"We'll get off as soon as we've had breakfast; and, as I did the cooking yesterday, it's your turn this morning. There's still a little fire in the stove."

Jake disappeared into the cabin, and presently came out again and was filling his pipe when Harry sprang up suddenly on the deck.

"Hello!" he cried. "There's a schooner yonder!"

It was growing a little clearer and Frank, turning around, saw a tall black spire of canvas cutting against the sky. He made out a frothy whiteness beneath it where the swell broke on the vessel's bows, and the sight of her singularly stirred his imagination. She had appeared so suddenly, probably from behind the point, and she looked ghostly in the uncertain light. She ran in under her headsails and boom-foresail with her mainmast bare, rising higher and growing clearer all the while. By and by there was a splash, and a voice broke through the wailing of the trees.

"Three fathom," it said. "You can luff her in a little."

Harry seemed about to hail her, but Jake gripped his arm, and they all stood silent while the schooner crept up abreast of them. The little sloop, lying with the shadowy land close behind her, had evidently not been seen. Then the vessel commenced to fade again, and in a few minutes she had vanished altogether.

"It looks as if there might have been some truth in old Sandberg's tale," Harry remarked thoughtfully. "It's kind of curious that halibut fisherman from Bannington's said he saw her too."

"He said she'd a white stripe round her. Sandberg allowed it was green," objected Jake.

"That wouldn't prove anything. They could soon paint the stripe another color."

"What would they want to do it for?"

"What does a schooner want running in here? There's no freight to be picked up nearer than Port Townsend."

"That," said Jake dryly, "is just what I don't know. What's more, I don't want to. She might have run in for bark for cooking, or maybe for water."

Harry laughed. "If she has come down from Seattle they'd get plenty cordwood or, if they wanted it, stove coal there, and I guess a skipper wouldn't waste a fair wind like this one to save two or three dollars. The thing's mighty curious. That vessel's been seen twice, anyway, and nobody seems to know where she comes from or where she goes."

"Well," Jake observed stolidly, "she doesn't belong to you or me, and if you want your breakfast it should be ready."

They crawled into the cabin, and when they had made a meal Jake sculled the sloop in near enough to the steep beach for them to jump. Then he flung a small packet after them.

"It's the most I can spare you, as I mayn't get a slant round the reefs until to-morrow," he said. "Anyway, it will do you two meals, and you ought to fetch the ranch by sundown. You want to head right up the valley until you strike a big log that lies across the river. When you get over, cross the neck of the ridge where it's lowest. You'll see the clearing from the top of it."

Harry said this was plain enough and moved away across the shingle, Frank following him cautiously when they reached the fringe of driftwood which divided beach from bush. Whitened logs and barked branches were scattered about in tangled confusion where the water had left them, and it was with difficulty that the lads scrambled over the barrier. Then Frank stopped breathless, with one leg wet to the knee and a rent in his trousers.

"It's pretty rough going, if this is an average sample," he panted.

"You'll find it a good deal worse before we reach the ranch," Harry answered with a laugh.

He strode forward, and Frank looked around with wonder when they plunged into the bush, for he had never seen a wood of that kind except in pictures of the giant Californian Sequoia. There are, of course, pines in the eastern states, but they seemed pigmies by comparison with these tremendous conifers which were already tall and stately when Columbus sailed from Spain. They ran up far above the boy in huge cylindrical columns before they flung out their first great branches, which met and crossed like the ribs of high-vaulted arches, holding up a roof of dusky greenery. Beneath, there was a dim shadow, and a tangle of such luxuriant vegetation as is seen, excepting in the tropics, probably only upon the warm, damp Pacific Slope.

There was another difference which struck Frank. The eastern woods that he had seen were clear of wreckage, for lumber and fuel are valuable there, and the ax had kept them clean, but this forest was strewn with huge logs and branches, some of which evidently had fallen years ago. Thickets of all kinds had sprung up between, and these were filled with tufts of unrolling fern which Harry told him would grow six or eight feet high. Through the midst of it all there twisted a narrow path which Frank remembered Jake had mentioned as the Indian trail.

"Have you Indians here?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," said Harry, "we have a few Siwashes, though there are more of them up in Canada. They seem fond of Indians there."

"Are they quiet?"

Harry chuckled. "You don't want to get them mixed with the redskins of the plains, though I suppose where they're not wiped out they're pretty quiet too. These fellows are a different breed. Most of them are sailors and fishermen, and they dress much the same as you and I do. They come up these rivers now and then after the salmon, and they made this trail. You can tell that by the looks of it."

"How?"

"It goes in and out, and where there's an obstacle it winds around. That's the difference between a white man's and an Indian's nature. The Siwash strikes a big fir log, and he walks around it, if he has to keep on doing it for months. It doesn't seem to worry him that he's wasting a minute or two every time. Then the white man comes along and gets to work with his ax. He goes right straight through. It's born in him."

Frank had made a sign of understanding. He knew something of the history of the old great nations as well as that of his own country, and he remembered another dominant race that ages ago blazed its trails from Rome across all Europe and far into Asia. It was characteristic of those men that, turning aside for no obstacle, they went straight, and long after their power had perished their roads remained, running, as the crow flies, through morasses and over mountains and rivers. His own people had done much the same, whittling west with the axes through the eastern woods, and then pushing on with their wagons across the lonely plains, until they drove the steel track through the snow-clad Rockies and over the Sierras. They died in shoals on the journey, but it was the march of a nation, and always more came on, the lumberman after the trapper, the track-grader on the cowboy's heels, with ranches and farms and factories growing up along the line. Now they had reached the Pacific, and Frank wondered vaguely whether that would be the limit, or where they were going then. It was, however, a question that seemed too big for him.

"This country's rough on one's clothes," he said ruefully, looking down at a second tear in his trousers.

Harry laughed. He was dressed in old duck overalls, long boots, and a battered gray hat.

"That's a fact. What you want to wear is leather. There were two sports from back East came out to hunt last fall, and they had their things made of some patent cloth warranted to turn water and resist any thorns. Jake went along to cook for them." He paused with a chuckle and added, "They were wearing their blankets because they hadn't any clothes left when he brought them back."

They went on for an hour or so until they came out upon the bank of a frothing river which roared among the rocks in a shallow cañon. There was no way of reaching the water, had they desired it, and, as Harry had predicted, the trail they followed grew rapidly worse. In places it wound perilously along narrow ledges beneath a dripping wall of rock, in others it led over banks of stones which had slipped down from the heights above. The boys made very slow progress until noon, when they stopped for a meal from the package Jake had thrown them. While they ate it Frank looked down again at his boots, which were already badly ripped.

"They were new just before I left Winnipeg," he said. "In some ways the people in Europe are ahead of us. There are one or two countries where they make their shoes of wood."

Harry was too busy to make an answer, and when he had finished eating he carefully tied up the packet, which was now considerably smaller, before he turned to his companion.

"We'd better be hitting the trail," he said. "Unless we can make the ranch by sundown, we'll get mighty little supper."

They pushed on for a couple of hours, still floundering and stumbling among the rocks. Harry stopped for a moment where the bush was thinner and pointed to a big gap in a ridge of hillside three or four miles away.

"That's the neck," he said. "The log we cross the river on is somewhere abreast of it. We surely can't have passed the thing."

They went on a little farther, but there was no sign of the log. Presently Harry stopped again with an exclamation, catching a glimpse of a great branchless fir which rose out of a welter of foam in the bottom of the cañon.

"There she is," he exclaimed, "jammed in where we certainly can't get down to her. It will be difficult to go straight this time, but we'll have to try."

Frank drew a pace or two nearer the edge of the cañon, and felt a creepy shiver run through him as he looked down. The rock he stood upon arched out a little over the shadowy hollow, through the bottom of which the wild waters seethed and clamored. He supposed that he stood at least sixty feet above them. The rock on the opposite side also projected, so that the rift was wider at the bottom than at the top. In one place, however, the crest of it had broken away and plunged into the gulf, leaving a short slope down which stones and soil had slid. Its lower edge lay about twelve feet beneath him, though the distance would have been rather less if it could have been measured horizontally.

"How are we to get across?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Jump," said Harry curtly. "Can't you do it?"

"No," Frank answered with some reluctance.

"Scared?" asked Harry, looking at him curiously.

"I am, but it's not that altogether."

"You didn't seem to want sand when you jumped into the boat."

Frank stood silent a moment or two with a flush on his face. Had he been forced to make the choice a year earlier, he probably would have jumped and chanced it from shame of appearing afraid or of owning his inferiority to another, but he had learned a little sense since then.

"It was different then," he explained. "I was scared—badly scared—but I felt I could do the thing if I forced myself to it. Now I'm almost certain that I can't."

"Yes," owned Harry, thoughtfully, "that's quite right. One hasn't much use for the fellow whose great idea is to keep himself from getting hurt, but when a thing's too big for you it's best to own it." He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "The question is how we're going to get across, and my notion is that we'd better head right up into the bush. The river will be getting smaller, and it forks somewhere. Each branch will probably be only half the size, and I guess the cañon can't go on very far."

It occurred to Frank that considering the nature of the country it would be singularly inconvenient if the cañon went on for another league or two, particularly as they had only a handful of provisions left, but he followed his companion, and they stumbled and floundered forward all the afternoon. There was now no trail to follow, and where they were not forced to scramble over slippery rock, fallen trees and thorny brakes barred their way. Still, there was nothing to indicate that the cañon was dying out, and where they could have reached the water it either foamed furiously between rocky ledges or spun round in horrible black eddies on the verge of a wild, yeasty turmoil. They looked at these spots and abandoned any thought of swimming.

Evening came at length, and they sat down beneath a big cedar where the roar of the river rang about them in deep pulsations. A chilly wind was wailing in the tops of the pines, and trails of white mist commenced to drift in and out among their trunks, which showed through it spectrally. Harry gazed about him with a rueful grin on his face.

"If I'd an ax, one or two matches, and a couple of blankets, I'd make you quite snug. Then with a few groceries, a kettle, and a spider, we'd have all any one could reasonably want."

"You haven't got them," Frank commented. "Wouldn't it save time if you wished for a furnished house?"

"I'd 'most as soon have an ax. Then I could make a shelter that would, anyway, keep us comfortable enough, and when I'd cut you a good layer of spruce twigs you wouldn't want a better bed. If I'd a rifle I might get a blue grouse for supper. Still"—and he laughed—"as you say, we haven't got them, and we couldn't do any cooking without matches. Curious, isn't it, what a lot of things you want, and that in most cases you have to get another fellow to make them?"

Frank agreed with this, but he had never realized the truth of it as he did just then. It was clear that the man who made all he wanted must live as the Indians or grosser savages did, and that it was only the division of employments that provided one with the comforts of civilization. Every man, it seemed, lived by the toil of another, for while on the Pacific Slope they turned the forests into dressed lumber and raised fruit and wheat, the clothes they wore, and their saws and plows and axes, came from the East. One could clear a ranch on Puget Sound only because a host of other men puddled liquid iron or pounded white-hot steel in the forges of, for instance, Pennsylvania. Frank would very much have liked to provide his companion with the fruit of somebody else's labor in the shape of a few matches, which would have made a cheerful fire possible.

In the meanwhile Harry had opened the packet and divided its contents equally.

"There's not enough to keep any over," he observed. "We have got to make the ranch to-morrow."

They ate the little that was left them, and then set to work to search for a young spruce from which they might obtain a few branches, but they failed to find one small enough even to climb. Coming back they lay down among the cedar sprays, which seemed rather wet, and it was some time before Frank could go to sleep. He was still hungry, and the roar of the river and the strangeness of his surroundings had a peculiar effect on him. The mist, which was getting thicker, rested clammily on his face, and crawled in denser wreaths among the black trunks which stood out here and there from the encircling gloom. Drops of moisture began to fall upon him from the branches, and once or twice he cautiously moved an elbow until it touched his companion. It was consoling to feel that he was not alone.

At length, however, he fell asleep, and awaking in the gray light of dawn staggered to his feet when Harry called him, feeling very miserable. He was chilled to the bone. His shoulders ached, his knees ached, and one hip-joint ached worse than all, while his energy and courage seemed to have melted out of him. As a matter of fact, nobody unused to it feels very animated on getting up before sunrise from a bed on the damp ground.

"As we have to reach home to-night, we may as well get a move on," announced Harry. "It's about four o'clock now, and it won't be dark until after eight."

The prospect of a sixteen hours' march with nothing to eat all the while did not appeal to Frank. It was the first time in his life that he had felt downright hungry, and this fast had made him the more sensitive to an unpleasant pain in his left side.

"If you're not sure about the way, wouldn't it be better if we went back to Jake?" he suggested. "It seems a pity we didn't think of it earlier."

"I did," Harry answered smilingly. "The trouble is that Jake would clear out the minute the wind dropped a little or shifted enough to let him get round the head. Besides, he'd have mighty little to eat if he were still lying behind the point when we got there. When your letter reached us we'd hardly time to run down to Bannington's to meet the steamer, so I just grabbed what I could find, and we sailed in a few minutes."

Frank said nothing further, and they pushed on doggedly into the shadowy bush. It was wrapped in a thick white mist, and every brake they smashed through dripped with moisture. Except for the clamor of the river, everything was wonderfully still—so still, indeed, that the heavy silence was beginning to pall upon Frank, who suddenly turned to his companion.

"Isn't there anything alive besides ourselves in this bush?" he asked.

"That," replied Harry, "is more than I can tell you. We have bears, and a few timber wolves, besides two kinds of deer and several kinds of grouse, and some of them are quite often about, but there are belts of bush where for some reason you can't find one."

They went on again, following up the river for an hour or two. In the meanwhile the mist melted, and Frank could see the endless ranks of mighty trees stretch away before him until they merged into a blurred columnar mass. At last the cañon, which was growing shallower, forked off into two branches, and they followed one branch until a broken rocky slope led them down to the water. It was a dull greenish color and foamed furiously past them among great stones. There was no means of ascertaining how deep it was and the boys looked at each other dubiously for a moment or two. Then Harry made a little gesture.

"We have to get across," he said.

Frank, without waiting for his resolution to fail him, plunged in on the instant, and a couple of steps took him well above his knees. The water seemed icy cold. As a matter of fact, it was mostly melted snow, and the drainage from the glaciers had given it the curious green color. The gravel commenced to slide away beneath Frank's feet, and by the time the foam was swirling round his waist he was gasping and struggling savagely. There was a big, eddying pool not far away and, though he could swim a little, he had no desire to be swept into it. A moment or two later he was driven against a rock with a violence that shook all the breath out of him. He clung to it desperately until Harry came floundering by and held out his hand. They made a yard or two together and then Harry slipped suddenly, jerking Frank off his feet as he rolled over in the flood. Frank went down overhead and as he felt himself being swept along toward the eddy he exerted all his energy in a struggle to regain his footing. He clutched at a rock, but the swirling waters only carried him past. Half dazed and breathless he was flung against another rock. This time, with a great effort, he managed to hold on, and when he stood up, gasping, he found that the water now reached only to his knees. In another minute he and Harry were safe on dry land.

Half an hour later they crossed the other creek, and soon afterward Frank sat down limply in the warm sunlight, which at last came filtering between the thinner trees.

"I must have a rest," he gasped.

"There's just this trouble," Harry pointed out. "If you rest any time you won't want to get up again."

"If I go on now I'll drop in another few hundred yards," declared Frank.

It was probably no more than the truth. He had been clever at athletics and open air games, but, as it happened, he had been able to learn them easily. Besides, he had been indulged by his mother and had been rather a favorite at school, and as one result of it he fell short of the hardihood usually acquired by the boy who has everything against him. After all, an hour's exercise in a gymnasium or an hour and a half spent over a game amidst applause and excitement is a very different thing from the strain of unrelaxing effort that must be made all day when there is nobody to cheer. He did not want to rest, but his worn-out body rebelled and mastered him.

"Aren't—you—played out?" he stammered weakly.

"Oh, yes," replied Harry with a grin. "Still, in this country you're quite often dead played out and have to go on again."

"But if you can't?"

"Then," said Harry dryly, "you have to keep on trying until you're able to."

It struck Frank that this might be painful and his heart sank. After a while he tried another question:

"Don't people get lost in the bush every now and then?"

"Why, yes," was the answer. "There was a man strayed off from a picnic just outside one of the cities not long ago and they didn't find him until a month or two afterward. He was lying dead not a mile from a graded road."

Frank shivered inwardly at this.

"Still, I suppose you generally have something to guide you—the moss on the north side of the trees? I've heard that people who don't know about it walk around in rings."

"I must have gone pretty straight the only time I was lost," laughed Harry; "and it's mighty hard to find moss in some parts of the bush. In others it's all around the trees. I'd rather have a big peak as a guide. You have heard about people walking round, but I wonder whether you have heard that when they're badly scared they'll walk right across a trail without seeing it?"

"Is that a fact?" Frank asked in astonishment.

"Sure!" said Harry. "A lost man will sometimes walk across a logging road without the slightest idea that he's doing it. Anyway, I know where the homestead lies. It's only a question of holding out until we reach it."

Frank was sincerely pleased to hear this, and by and by he rose with an effort and they went on again.

CHAPTER III
THE RANCH

Dusk was not far away when the boys, stumbling down a low hillside, came into sight of an oblong clearing in the forest with a wooden house standing on one side of it. That was all Frank noticed, for he found it difficult to keep himself on his feet, and his sight seemed hazy. Indeed, he fell down once or twice in the steeper places, and had some trouble in getting up; and after that he had only a confused recollection of crossing an open space and entering a dwelling. A man shook hands with him, and a woman in a print dress made him sit down in a low chair before she set out a bountiful meal. Soon after he had eaten a considerable share of it Harry led him into a very little room where a bed like a shelf with a side to it was fixed against one wall. Five minutes later he was blissfully unconscious of his recent painful experience.

The sun was streaming in through the window when he awoke, feeling wonderfully refreshed, and, dressing himself in some overalls which had been laid across the foot of his bed, he walked out into the larger general room. It had uncovered walls of logs and a very roughly boarded floor, and there seemed to be little in it besides a stove, a table and several chairs.

A brown-faced man with a little gray in his hair sat at one end of the table and at the other end sat a woman resembling him and of about the same age. Harry, sitting between them, was apparently engaged in narrating their adventures. Frank, who took the place laid out for him, found that his supper had not spoiled his breakfast, for he fell upon the pork, potatoes, dried apricots, hot cakes and syrup with an excellent appetite. When the meal was over, the man led Frank into another room and filling his pipe asked him to sit down.

"We'd better have a talk," he said. "You can take the chair yonder."

Frank looked at him more closely when he sat down. Mr. Oliver, who was dressed in duck overalls, was rather spare in figure, though he looked wiry. His manner was quiet, and his voice was that of an educated man, but he had somewhat piercing gray eyes.

"I had a sincere regard for your father," he began. "On that account alone I should be glad to have you here; but first of all we had better understand each other. You mentioned that you had been in business in Minneapolis and afterward in Winnipeg. Didn't you like it?"

"No, sir," replied Frank, who felt that it would be wiser to answer carefully any questions this man might ask. "Still, that wasn't exactly why I gave it up, though"—and he hesitated—"to say I gave it up isn't quite correct."

"If I remember, you called it being fired, in your letter," Mr. Oliver suggested with a twinkle in his eyes. "What led up to that?"

"Slack trade in the last case. I'd like to think it was only the grudge a bullying clerk had against me in the other."

"Then, if you had been allowed, you would have stayed with the milling business, though you didn't care for it?"

"Yes," responded Frank. "Anyway, I'd have stayed until I could have got hold of something I liked better."

Mr. Oliver nodded in a way which suggested that he was pleased with the answer.

"Well," he said, "that brings us to the question why you came out here. Was it because you had heard that it was a good country for hunting and fishing?"

Frank's face flushed. "No, sir," he replied, "I wanted to earn a living, and I understood that a"—he was going to say a live man, but thought better of it—"any one who wasn't too particular could generally come across something to do quickest in the West. In fact, I'd like to begin at once. After buying my ticket and getting odd meals I've only two or three dollars left."

"Two-fifty, to be precise. My sister took your clothes away to mend. Now, it's possible that I might manage to get you into the office of some lumber or general trading company in one of the cities. How would that do?"

"I'd rather go on to the land. I'd like to be a rancher."

"How much do you know about ranching?"

"Very little, but I could soon learn."

It was Frank's first blunder, and he realized it as he saw the gleam of amusement in Mr. Oliver's eyes.

"It's by no means certain," commented the latter. "There are men who can't learn to use the ax in a lifetime. We'll let it go at that, and say you're willing to learn. Have you any idea of making money by ranching?"

Frank thought a moment. "Well," he said finally, "I'd naturally wish to make some, but I don't think that counts for most with me. I'd rather have the kind of life I like."

"The trouble with a good many men is that when they get it they find out they like something else. Quite sure that hunting and fishing aren't taking too prominent a place in your mind? If they are, I'd better tell you that the favorite amusement in this country is chopping down big trees. There's another fact that you must consider. It takes a good deal of money to buy a ranch and, unless it's already cleared, you have to wait a long while before you get any of the money back. This place cost me about nine thousand dollars, one way or another, and in all probability there's not a business on the Pacific Slope in which I wouldn't get twice as much as I'm getting here for the money, though I've been here a good many years. Now what do you expect to do with two dollars and a half?"

What he had heard had been somewhat of a shock to Frank, and the question was difficult to answer.

"I might earn a little more by degrees, sir," he said hopefully.

Mr. Oliver smiled at him encouragingly.

"It's possible; and there's cheaper land than mine, while a smart man used to the country can often get hold of a small contract of some kind. Now I'll tell you what we'll do. Wait a month, and then if you find that you like the life I'll hire you for what anybody else would give you."

With that he arose, signifying that the discussion was over, and Frank went out of doors and joined Harry in the clearing. The latter held a big handspike with an arched iron hook hinged to it, and he invited Frank to assist him in rolling logs.

"It will give you some idea how a ranch is cleared," he said. "To begin with, you had better take a look around."

Frank did so and first of all noticed the rather rambling house, part of which was built of logs notched into one another at the ends, though the rest, which had evidently been added to it later, was of sawed lumber. It was roofed with what he fancied were red cedar shingles. On the other side of it, carefully fenced off with tall split rails, stood orderly ranks of trees, some in delicate pink and white blossom. Harry told him they were apples and prunes and peaches. Nearer him were one or two fields of timothy grass and fresh green oats, and then more of the latter growing among fern-engirdled stumps sawed off some six feet above the ground. Beyond them, in turn, half-burned branches were strewn among another stretch of stumps, then there was a narrow belt where great trees lately chopped lay in tremendous ruin, and behind them again the forest rose in an unbroken wall.

"Now," explained Harry, "you have the whole thing in front of you, if you'll begin at the bush and work back toward the house. First you chop down the trees, then you burn them up and raise your first crop or two round the stumps. Afterward by degrees you grub up the stumps and get the clean, tilled land. When it's been worked a few years it will grow almost anything."

"But where's the stock?" Frank asked. "I had a notion that a ranch was a place where you raised no end of horses or cattle."

"That's on the plains," laughed Harry. "On this side of the Rockies it's any piece of cleared land with a house on it. At quite a few of the ranches they raise nothing but fruit. As you asked the question, though, our cattle are in the bush. They run there and live on what they can find until we round them up. Now we'll get to work."

He turned away after a pair of brawny oxen that were plodding leisurely across the clearing, and in a little while they halted on the edge of what Harry called the slashing. This was a belt of fallen timber which ran around most of the open space. As Frank gazed at the chaos of great trunks and mighty branches he felt inclined to wonder how Mr. Oliver had managed to get them down.

"What will you do with these?" he asked.

"Saw or chop off the bigger branches," Harry answered. "Then we'll wait until the trunks are good and dry in the fall and put a fire to them. It will burn up all the small stuff, and leave them like this."

He pointed to the rows of blackened and partly burned logs which lay between the slashing and the half-cleared soil, and Frank noticed that most of them had been sawed into several pieces.

"Couldn't you sell them for lumber?" he inquired.

"No," replied Harry. "For one thing, it's quite a long way to the nearest mill and we'd have to build a skidway for a mile or two down to the water. Besides, in a general way, it's only the redwood and red cedar that the mills have much use for."

Then he gave Frank a handspike that lay close by, and between them they prized up one end of a log so that he could slip a chain sling under it. The other end of the chain was attached to the yoke of the oxen, and when he called them the big white and red beasts hauled the log away until he stopped them and went back for another. Frank did not find much difficulty in this, but it was different when they had drawn six or seven of the logs together and laid them side by side. Harry said that the next lot must go on top of the others, and Frank was wondering how they were to get them there, when his companion laid two or three stout skids some distance apart against the first of the row. These, it was evident, would serve as short, slanting bridges, but Frank was still not clear as to how the next log could be propelled up them.

When Harry brought it up he slipped the chain along toward its middle, though it cost the boys an effort to prize the mass up with their handspikes, after which he made one end of the chain fast on the opposite side of the row, around which he led the oxen. The other end he hooked to their yoke, so that it now led doubled across the row and around the trunk they wished to raise. He said that when the chain was pulled the log would roll up it. He next shouted to the oxen, who plodded forward straining at the yoke, while he and Frank slipped their handspikes under opposite ends of the log.

"Heave!" he cried. "Send her up!"

Frank did his utmost, with the perspiration dripping from him and the veins on his forehead swelling, but the ponderous mass rolled very slowly up the skids, and several times he fancied it would drag the oxen backward and slide down on him. Indeed, for about half a minute it hung stationary, though Harry, who dared not draw out his handspike, shouted frantic encouragement to the straining beasts. Then it moved another inch or two, and one released skid shot up as though fired out of a gun when the log rolled upon the first of the preceding ones. They worked it well across them, and then freeing the chain went back for another, though Frank's arms felt as if they had been almost pulled out of their sockets.

"You want somebody to keep the oxen up to it as well as two to heave, when the logs are as big as these," said his companion. "Still, some of the small ranchers do the whole thing alone."

Frank could not help wondering what kind of men these were, but in the meanwhile he was obliged to bend all his thought on his difficult task, which grew heavier when, having ranged the logs in two layers, they commenced the third. The skids were now too short to reach the top of the second tier without making the slope rather steep and Harry said that they must cut some new ones. A couple of axes lay close by, and handing one to Frank he strode into the bush and stopped in front of a young fir.

"The butt ought to make a skid," he said. "I'll leave you to get it down and I'll look for another. You do it like this."

Spreading his feet apart and balancing himself lightly, he swung the heavy, long-hafted ax above his head. The big blade, descending, buried itself in the trunk, and rose with a flash when he wrenched it clear. This time he struck horizontally and a neat wedge-shaped chip flew out.

"Now," he said, handing the ax to Frank, "you can go ahead."

He turned away and Frank swung the ax experimentally once or twice. The thing looked easy. Whirling up the blade, he struck with all his might. It came down into the notch Harry had made, but it was the flat of it that struck, and, while the haft jarred his hands, the blade glanced and just missed his leg. This appeared somewhat extraordinary, and he was a little more cautious when he tried again. He hit the tree fairly this time, but almost a foot above the cut, and he was commencing to feel indignant when he dragged the steel out again, which in itself was not particularly easy. He then struck horizontally, but the blade did not seem to go in at all, and at the next attempt the ax buried itself in the soil, just grazing his boot. This steadied him, for he had no desire to lame himself for life. Shortening his hold upon the haft, he used it after the manner of a domestic chopper, until at length, when his hands were blistered and he was very hot, the tree went down with a crash. Then turning around he saw Harry watching him with a look of amusement.

"Have you got yours down?" Frank asked.

"Oh, yes," Harry replied, "and another. I've chopped them through for skids." He pointed to the hacked and splintered log. "Looks as if something had been eating it, doesn't it?"

Frank's face grew rather red. "You couldn't expect me to drop into it all at once. Give me a week or two to pick up the swing and balance of it."

"A week or two!" Harry seemed to address the clustering firs. "They sure raise smart folks back East."

"How long were you learning?" retorted Frank.

"Well," said Harry thoughtfully, "you could call it most of twelve years. I used to go whittling with a toy tomahawk soon after I could walk. Of course, they confiscated the thing now and then. Once it was after I'd just brought down a one-leg round table."

"Did you ever cut yourself?"

Harry rolled up his trousers and pointed to a big white mark below his knee.

"I could show you two or three more of them," he commented dryly. "There are quite a few bush ranchers who haven't got all their toes on."

He cut a skid from the butt of the log, and when they went back to the pile the work which before had been hard now became more or less dangerous. They had to prize and sometimes shoulder up the ponderous masses of timber three-high, and Frank was far from feeling over the effects of the previous two-days' march. Still, if his companion could manage it, he was determined that he could, and he toiled on, soaked in perspiration, straining and gasping over one of the heaviest tasks connected with clearing land, until to his vast relief Miss Oliver appeared in the doorway, jingling a cowbell as a signal that dinner was ready.

They went back to work after the meal, and Frank somehow held out until the middle of the afternoon. It seemed very hot in the clearing and the scorching sunrays beat down upon the back of his neck and shoulders. One of his horribly blistered hands commenced to bleed, he was almost afraid to straighten his back, and his arms were sore all over. At last as they were heaving up a heavy log it stuck just on the edge of the tier and Frank, who felt his breath failing him and his heart beating as though it would burst, could hear the oxen scuffling furiously on the other side of the pile.

"Heave!" Harry shouted. "Another inch will land her!"

"I can't!" Frank panted, with his hands slipping upon the lever.

"Then look out!" warned Harry. "Let go of the thing and jump!"

Frank did not remember whether he let go or whether the handspike was torn from his grasp, but he jumped backward as far as he could and staggered a few paces farther when he saw the big log rolling down after him. Then he fell headlong, there was a crash and a great trampling of hoofs, and he wondered whether the log would crush the life out of him. When he scrambled to his feet, however, it had stopped not far away; and in a few moments Harry appeared from behind the pile.

"It pulled the oxen backward right up to the logs," he explained. Then he looked sharply at Frank. "We haven't done badly for one day, and Aunt Sophy wants me to haul in some stovewood. You sit there and rest yourself awhile."

He went away with the oxen, and Frank was thankful to do as he was told, for his heart was heavy and he was utterly worn out. His hands were torn and blistered and the logs that he had partly lifted with his body had bruised his breast and ribs. If this was ranching, it was horrible work, and he felt that he would break down altogether if he attempted much more of it. It was nothing like his dream of riding through the bush on spirited horses after half-wild cattle. Then the troublesome question as to what he should do if he gave it up had to be faced. He had found that he had no aptitude for business, and he had a suspicion that work would be quite as hard in a logging camp or in a sawmill. It was clear that he could not go home, even if he had the money for his fare, which was not the case, and he felt very forlorn and miserable.

In the meanwhile the twigs he lay upon were pleasantly soft, and it was cool and peaceful in the lengthening shadow of the firs. There was a curious rhythmic drumming sound which he found most soothing and which he afterward learned was made by a blue grouse not far away. The pungent smell of withering fir and cedar sprays in the slashing dulled his senses, until at last his troubles seemed to melt away and he fancied that he was back in Boston where nobody had ever required him to heave ponderous logs upon one another.

It was a couple of hours later when Mr. Oliver, walking back that way with Harry, stopped and looked at the pile.

"You have put all those up since this morning?" he asked.

Harry said that they had done so, and Mr. Oliver glanced down with a little smile at Frank, who lay fast asleep.

"It's rather more than I expected. The lad must have done his share, but it might have been better if you had started him at something easier."

"He stood it all right until a while ago, and I think he'd have seen me through if it hadn't been for the walk yesterday. Shall we crosscut some of those branches to-morrow instead?"

"No," replied Mr. Oliver after a moment's reflection. "It might be wiser to let him see the worst of it. If he stands a week's logging there's no doubt that he'll do." He paused a moment and looked down at Frank again. "I don't think he'll back down on it. He's very much like his father, as I remember him a good many years ago."

Then he laid his hand on Frank's shoulder.

"Get up, boy. Supper's ready."

CHAPTER IV
TARGET PRACTICE

The two boys spent most of the following week rolling logs and they were busy among them one hot afternoon when Mr. Oliver walked out of the bush nearby. As they did not immediately see him, he stopped and stood watching them in the shadow for a few minutes. Frank was feeling more cheerful by this time, though his hands were still very sore and, as a good many of the logs were burned on the outside, he was more or less blackened all over. He was getting used to the work, and Jake, who had arrived with the sloop in the meanwhile, relieved him and his companion of the heaviest part of it. Turning around presently at a sound, Frank saw Mr. Oliver smiling at him.

"If I were as grimy as you I think I'd go in for a swim," he said. "It's hot enough, and there's a nice beach not far away. I dare say Harry will go along with you while Jake and I put up these logs."

Harry lost no time in throwing down his handspike, and they set out together down a narrow trail through the woods, which led them out by and by upon a head above the cove in which the sloop lay moored. Standing on the edge of the crag, Frank looked down upon the clear, green water which lapped smooth as oil upon a belt of milk-white shingle and broke into little wisps of foam beneath the gray rocks at the mouth of the cove. Beyond this the sea flashed silver in the sunlight like a great mirror, except where a faint, fitful breeze traced dark blue streaks across it. Dim smudges of islands and headlands broke the gleaming surface here and there, and high above it all was a cold white gleam of eternal snow.

In a few minutes they had scrambled down a winding path, and Frank, stripping off his clothes, waded into the water abreast of the sloop which lay swinging gently about a dozen yards from the beach.

"Can you swim off to her?" shouted Harry.

Frank said that he thought he could, and set about it with a jerky breast stroke, for he was not very proficient in the art. The water was decidedly cold and he was glad when he reached the sloop. Clutching her rail where it was lowest amidships he endeavored to pull himself out. To his disgust he found that his feet would shoot forward under the bottom of her, with the result that he sank back to the neck after each effort. When he had made two or three attempts he heard a shout:

"Hold on! You'll never do it that way."

Harry shot toward him, his limbs gleaming curiously white through the shining green water, though his face and neck showed a coffee-brown, as did his lower arms, which he swung out above his head, rolling from side to side at every stroke. He grasped Frank's shoulder and pushed him toward the stern of the sloop.

"Now," he said when he clutched it, "there are just two ways of getting out of the water into a boat. If she has a flat stern you make for there and get your hands on the top of it spread a little apart. Then you heave yourself up by a handspring—though that isn't very easy."

Frank smiled at these instructions, but said nothing. It was easy for him, because he had learned the trick in a gymnasium. Suddenly jerking down his elbows, which ever since he had grasped the stern were as high as his head, he shot his body up until his hands were down at his hips. Then, as his waist was level with the sloop's transom, he quietly crawled on board. Harry, however, had to make two or three attempts before he succeeded, and then he looked at his companion with undisguised astonishment.

"I've never done it right away yet," he said admiringly. "Say, do you know how to dive?"

"No," replied Frank; "that is, I've scarcely tried."

Harry led him forward where the boat's sheer was higher and he could stand a couple of feet or so above the water.

"You only get half the fun out of swimming unless you can dive," he said. "Let's see what kind of a show you make."

Frank stiffened himself and jumped. At least, that was what he meant to do, but as it happened, he merely threw himself flat upon the water, and the result was rather disconcerting. He felt as though all the breath had been knocked out of him, and in addition to this all the front of his body was smarting. He was about to swim toward the stern again when Harry stopped him.

"Hold on!" he called. "You may as well learn the other way of getting out, and if she's a sailing craft with a bowsprit it's much the easiest one. Swim forward to the bow."

Frank did so and saw that a wire ran from the end of the bowsprit, dipping a little below the water where it was attached to the boat. He had no difficulty in getting his foot upon it, and after that it was a simple matter to crawl on board. His chest and limbs were still smarting and were very red when he joined Harry. The latter regarded him with a look of amusement.

"You'll get hurt every time, if you dive like that," he said. "Look here," and he stood up on the boat's deck. "You want to get your weight on the fore part of your feet all ready to shove off before you go. Then you must shoot as far forward as you can—falling on it won't do—and hollow your back and stiffen yourself once you're under. That is, when you want to skim along just below the surface. Watch me."

Leaning forward a little he sprang out from the boat, a lithe, tense figure, with hands flung straight forward over his head. They struck the water first, and he went in with an impetus which swept him along scarcely a foot beneath the top. Then his speed slowly slackened and he had stopped altogether about a length of the boat away when he raised his head and swam back to her.

"You don't want to try that in less than four feet until you're sure you can do it right," he said when he had climbed on board. "The other kind of diving's different." Then, taking up a galvanized pin, he threw it in. "See whether you can fetch it. There's about eight or nine feet of water here. You can open your eyes as soon as your head's in, and you won't have any trouble in coming up again. Jump, and throw your legs straight up as you go."

Frank managed this time not to drop in a heap as he had done before. He also opened his eyes under water for the first time and found it perfectly easy to see. It was like looking through green glass. He could make out the pin lying a long way down beneath him. It was, however, impossible to reach it. The water seemed determined on forcing him back to the top, and when he abandoned the struggle to get down he seemed to reach the surface with a bound.

"How far did I go?" he gasped.

"About six feet. It's quite as far as I expected."

Harry plunged, and Frank, who had climbed out in the meanwhile, saw him striking upward with his feet until he turned and came up with a rush, holding the pin in one hand. Flinging it on board he headed for the beach and was standing on the shingle rubbing himself with his hands when Frank joined him.

"I guess you had two towels when you went swimming back East?" he laughed.

Frank looked up inquiringly, acknowledging that he usually had taken one.

"Well," said Harry, "we have them at the homestead, but there are ranches in this country where you wouldn't get even one."

"No towels!" exclaimed Frank in some astonishment. "What do they use instead?"

"Some of them cut a very little bit off of a cotton flour bag. Those bags are valuable because they keep them to mend their shirts with. I've a notion that the other fellows sit in the sun."

Frank laughed and scrambled into his clothes after rubbing himself with his hands. He was commencing to realize that whether Harry was joking with him or not it was unavoidable that they should have different ways in different parts of so big a country. Indeed, now that he was some four thousand miles from Boston, he felt that instead of its being curious that the people were slightly different it was wonderful that they were so much the same. If one measured four thousand miles across Europe and Asia one would get Frenchmen at the one end and wild Cossacks or nomad Tartars at the other, with perhaps a score of wholly different nations, speaking different languages, between.

They had an excellent appetite for supper when they went back to the ranch, and after the meal was over, Mr. Oliver took down a rifle from the wall.

"You can bring yours along, Harry," he said, and then turned to Frank. "In a general way, a rancher doesn't get much time for hunting, and he seldom goes out for the fun of the thing, but an odd deer or grouse comes in handy now and then. Anyway, before you can hunt at all you must learn to shoot and you may as well begin."

"Dad's a pot-hunter," chuckled Harry. "At least, that's what the two smart sports we had round here last fall said he was."

A gleam of amusement crept into his aunt's eyes, but Mr. Oliver's face contracted into a slight frown.

"Harry knows my views, but you had better hear them, too," he said to Frank. "I'm certainly what those fellows called a pot-hunter, though they very foolishly seemed to think that one ought to be ashamed of it. Most of the ranchers in this district take down the rifle only when they want something to eat, and that's the best excuse there is for shooting. Is it a desirable thing to destroy a dozen harmless beasts for the mere pleasure of killing, and leave them in the bush for the wolves and eagles?"

"Don't the game laws prevent that, sir?" Frank asked.

"They limit a man to so many head of this and that, and in a general way he brings no more out with him, but it doesn't by any means follow that he hasn't killed a bear or a deer that he doesn't mention in some lonely ravine. The sport who hasn't a conscience is as big a pest in a game country as the horn and hide hunter used to be, and we have to thank him for practically exterminating several of the finest beasts in North America."

"Wouldn't the clearing of virgin country and the way the farms and ranches spring up account for it?"

"Only to some extent. It's my opinion that there are more deer and bears about the smaller ranches than you could find anywhere else. All this is no reason why you shouldn't learn to shoot; that is, to hit your game just where you want to and kill it there and then."

He walked out with his rifle and the boys followed him across the clearing. Here Harry fixed a piece of white paper about two feet square with a black dab in the middle of it on the trunk of a big fir, after which he came back to where the others were standing.

"How far do you make it?" his father asked.

"About a hundred yards."

Mr. Oliver now turned to Frank.

"As I think you told me you couldn't shoot, I'll give you a short lecture on the principles of the thing. When they're after birds most men use a scatter gun. It will spread an ounce of shot—several hundred pellets—over a six-foot circle at a distance of about forty yards; but the rifle is the great weapon of western America. Take this one and open the breach—now look up the barrel."

"I can see little grooves twisting round it like a screw," said Frank.

"That's the rifling. It serves two purposes. The bullet—you use only one—has to screw round and round to get out, and that gives the explosion time to act upon it. It increases the muzzle velocity. Then it gives the bullet a rotary motion, and anything spinning on its axis travels very much straighter than it would do otherwise. It's the twisting motion that keeps a top from falling over."

Frank could readily understand this, and he remembered what he had read about the gyroscope.

"Now," continued Mr. Oliver, "we have to consider the pull of the earth upon the bullet, which would bring it down, and to counteract this you have to direct it rather upward. The slight curve it makes before it reaches its mark is called the trajectory, and it naturally varies with the distance. You arrange it by the sights. There are two of them, one on the muzzle and one near the breach. The last one slides up and down like this. The farther off the mark is the higher it must go. As you have to get them both in line, it's evident that pushing the back one up will raise the muzzle. You can understand that?"

Frank said that he could, and Mr. Oliver pushed the rearsight down and snapped a lever.

"It's cocked, though it hasn't a shell in it. At a hundred yards or less the sight goes down about the limit." He handed Frank the rifle. "Stand straight, left foot a little to the left and forward—that will do. Now bring the rifle to your shoulder—left hand under the barrel near the rearsight, elbow well down, right hand round the small of the butt, thumb on the top. Try to hold it steady."

Frank found it difficult. The rifle was heavy and the muzzle seemed to want to drop, but Mr. Oliver stopped him when he let his left elbow fall in toward his side.

"Bring it down and wait a moment before you throw it up again," he advised.

Frank did so once or twice, and at length his instructor seemed satisfied.

"Now we'll aim," he said. "Drop your left cheek on the stock—you'd better shut your left eye. Try to see the target through the hollow of the rearsight, with the front one right in the middle of it."

It seemed singularly difficult. The square of paper now looked exceedingly small and the sights would wobble across it. After several attempts, however, Frank got them comparatively steady.

"Put your forefinger on the trigger," Mr. Oliver directed. "Don't pull, but squeeze it slowly and steadily, holding your breath in the meanwhile."

This was worst of all, for Frank found that he pulled the sight off the target when he tightened his forefinger. After he had made an attempt or two, Mr. Oliver told him to put the rifle down.

"See what you can do, Harry," he said.

"Standing?"

"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, turning to Frank again. "Standing's hardest, kneeling easier, and lying down easiest of all, but when you're hunting in thick bush you generally have to stand."

Harry slipped a shell into his rifle, and pitched it to his shoulder. It wobbled for a moment and then grew still. After that there was a spitting of red sparks from the muzzle, which suddenly jerked, followed by a sharp detonation. A second or two later there was a thud, and Harry laughed as he stood gazing at the mark while a little blue smoke curled out of the muzzle and the opened breach.

"It's well up on the left top corner," he said.

Frank was blankly astonished. He could certainly see the square of paper, but it seemed impossible that anybody could tell whether there was a mark on it. As a matter of fact, very few people who had not been taught how to use their eyes could have done so.

Then Mr. Oliver took up his rifle, and Frank noticed that his whole body and limbs seemed to fall into the best position for holding it steady without any visible effort on the man's part. The blue barrel did not seem to move at all until at length it jerked, and Harry grinned exultantly at Frank when a thin streak of smoke drifted past them.

"That's the pot-hunter's way. He's about two inches off the center."

Mr. Oliver gave Frank the rifle, and this time he slipped in a shell.

"If you can't get the sights right bring it down," he directed. "Don't dwell too long on your aim."

Frank held his breath and stiffened his muscles, but the foresight would wobble and the target seemed to dance up and down in a most exasperating manner. At length he pressed the trigger. He felt a sharp jar upon his shoulder, but to his astonishment he heard no report. After what seemed quite a long time there was a faint thud in the forest.

"You've got something, but I guess it's the wrong tree," laughed Harry.

After that Frank tried several shots, finally succeeding in hitting the tree a couple of feet above the mark. Mr. Oliver, who had taken out his pipe in the meanwhile, nodded at him encouragingly.

"You only need to practice steadily," he said. "For the rest, anything that tends toward a healthy life will make you shoot well. Whisky and tobacco most certainly won't."

Harry's eyes twinkled as he glanced at his father's pipe.

"One of them hasn't much effect on him. I don't know whether I told you about the bag the two sports who were round here last fall nearly made. I got the tale from Webster on the next ranch."

Frank said that he would like to hear it, and Harry laughed.

"Well," he began, "Webster was sitting on a log in the bush just outside his slashing, looking around kind of sorrowful at the trees. It seemed to him they looked so big and nice it would be a pity to spoil them. When I've been chopping until my hands are sore I sometimes feel like that."

"It doesn't lead to riches," interrupted his father dryly.

"By and by," Harry continued, "Webster heard a smashing in the underbrush. It kept coming nearer, but it wasn't in the least like the sound a bear makes or a jumping deer. You don't know they're around unless they're badly scared. Anyway, Webster sat still wondering what it could be, until he saw a man crawling on the ground. He was coming along very cautiously, but you couldn't have heard him more than half a mile away. By and by he disappeared behind a big tree, and as there hadn't been a deer about for a week Webster wondered if the man was mad, until there was a blaze of repeater firing in the bush. Then Fremont, his logging ox, came out of it like a locomotive and headed for the range so fast that Webster couldn't see how he went. He grabbed his logging handspike, and found a sport abusing another for missing in the bush.

"'What in the name of wonder are you after?' he asked.

"'We've been trailing a deer two hours,' one of them declared. 'A mighty big deer. Must have been an elk.'

"'An elk, sure. I saw it,' added the other.

"'There isn't a blamed elk in the country,' said Webster.

"'You'll see,' persisted the other. 'I tell you I pumped the cylinder full into him.'

"'Quite sure of that?' Webster asked.

"The other man said that he was, and Webster waved his handspike.

"'Then it's going to cost you sixty dollars, and I'll take a deposit now,' he said. 'It's my ox Fremont you've been after.'"

"Did they give it to him?" Frank broke in.

"Five dollars," Harry answered. "Webster looked big and savage, and they compromised on that."

"But had they hit the ox?"

Harry chuckled. "Give a man who isn't a hunter a repeater and he'll never hit anything—unless it's what he isn't shooting at."

"Anyway, it's better to stick to the single shot at first," Mr. Oliver remarked. "Then you take time and care, and it's more likely that when you shoot you kill. No humane person has any use for the man who leaves badly wounded beasts wandering about the woods."

He rose, and shook out his pipe.

"We'll be getting back," he added. "There's only one way of making it easy to rise at sun-up."

They walked toward the house together, and it seemed to Frank that there was a good deal to be said for this rancher's views. He did not tell tall stories and boast of what he had shot, but Frank had seen enough to realize that it was most unlikely that he left any sorely wounded animal to die in misery. It was not often that Mr. Oliver molested the beautiful wild creatures of the woods, but when he fixed the sights on one of them he killed it clean.

CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERIOUS SCHOONER

Three or four weeks slipped by uneventfully, and Frank was commencing to like the simple, laborious life at the ranch. He and Harry were standing together one evening on the shingle down in the cove. It was close upon high water and a long swell worked in, breaking noisily upon the pebbles, while they could see the blue undulations burst into snowy froth about the dark rocks at the entrance. The sun had just dipped; it was wonderfully fresh and cool, and a sweet resinous smell drifted out of the forest behind them.

Harry glanced at a canoe which lay close by. It was about fourteen feet long and just wide enough to sit in, and had been hollowed out of a cedar log by a Siwash Indian. The bow, which swept sharply upward, had been rudely cut into the likeness of a bird's head. The craft was kept there so that anybody who wished to reach the sloop could go off in her.

"I don't think it's quite high water yet, and the breeze is dropping," Harry was saying. "There's just enough to take us a mile or two down the beach over the tide with the spritsail set. Then we could lower the mast and paddle home."

"Wouldn't she sail back?" Ray asked.

"No," was the answer, "only with a fair wind. You can't beat a thing like that to windward. There's not enough of her in the water."

Frank said that he would like to go, and after running the canoe down they lifted the short mast into place and set the little sail. It filled when a few strokes of the paddle had driven them out of the cove, and they slid away, rising and falling smoothly, with the swell running after them. Harry took hold of the rope that held the foot of the sail fast to a peg.

"You want to keep the sheet handy in a very small craft," he instructed. "Then if a hard puff of wind strikes her you can slack it up, or let it go altogether, when the sail will blow out loose. There's more weight in this breeze than I expected."

It seemed to Frank from the gurgle at the bows and the way the foam slipped by them that they were sailing very fast, but for a while he watched the rocky heads that dipped to the water open out one after another and then close in again behind them. The woods that crept between them down to the strips of shingle were rapidly growing shadowy, and the ridges of water that followed them seemed to be getting darker, though here and there one of them was flecked with bright wisps of froth. At length Harry let the sheet go and brought the canoe around.

"We'll have the mast down and get back," he said.

They had no trouble in rolling up the sail and laying the mast in the bottom of the craft, but when they dipped the paddles, Harry kneeling in the stern and Frank toward the bow, the latter realized that their next task would not be quite so easy. A chilly wind which seemed considerably stronger than before they turned struck his face, the bows splashed noisily, throwing up little spurts of spray, and now and then the narrow craft lurched rather wildly over the top of a swell. He worked hard for about twenty minutes, and then glancing astern was a little astonished to see that a rock which had been opposite them was now a remarkably small distance behind. Harry, who had evidently followed his glance, scowled disapprovingly.

"We'll have to paddle, that's a cold fact," he declared. "The tide seems to have turned quite a while before it ought to have, and the breeze is getting up again. We might find slacker water right inshore."

They edged close in to the rocks, the sight of which did not add to Frank's comfort, though the boat crept on a little faster. The swell broke in long white swirls about their feet, and it was evident that any attempt to land there was out of the question. Besides, even if they managed to reach the bush, there was no trail to the ranch, and he had no desire to struggle through the tangle of fallen branches and dense thickets in the darkness. His knees and hands were getting sore, but he toiled on patiently with the single-ended paddle, while the canoe lurched more viciously and little showers of spray flew in over her bow. It was becoming exceedingly hard work to drive the craft into the rising head sea. The foam-girt rocks were, however, slowly crawling by, and at length, after laboring, panting and breathless, around a somewhat larger head, Harry suddenly stopped paddling.

"Hold on!" he exclaimed. "Just keep her from swinging, and look yonder!"

Frank, glad of a brief rest, gazed astern. It was neither light nor dark, for a pale moon hung low in the sky, casting a faint silvery track upon the water, which was now flecked with white froth a little off shore. Across the sweep of radiance there moved a tall black spire of slanting canvas, with the foam leaping up about the shadowy strip of hull beneath.

"The schooner!" said Harry significantly. "She's beating up over the tide and she'll probably stand close in, but I don't think they could see us against the land."

He spoke as if he did not wish to be seen, and for no very clear reason Frank felt glad that they lay in the shadow of a big black head. The schooner was coming on very fast, rising, it seemed to him, bodily, until he could make out the curl of piled-up water that flowed away beneath her depressed side. The mass of straining sailcloth hid most of her slanted deck, and he could see nobody on board her, but it seemed curious that she carried no lights. Then it occurred to him that she was heading straight for them, and he was about to dip his paddle when Harry stopped him.

"Keep still!" he commanded. "They'll have to come round before they reach us."

Frank could now hear the roar of water about the bow of the vessel, and in a minute or two she swayed suddenly upright and there was a great thrashing of canvas as, shooting forward, she came round. She was very near them and as her boom-foresail and mainsail swung across, leaving clear the side of the deck they had shrouded, he saw two or three shadowy figures busy forward. They became more distinct as she drove back into the moonlight, which fell upon the form of her helmsman. Frank could see him clearly, and there was, he fancied, something peculiar about the man.

The splashing top of a sea slopped into the canoe as they got way on her, and they taxed their strength to the utmost during the next hour. The craft bucked and jumped as they laboriously drove her over the confused swell, which was rapidly getting higher, and there was already a good deal of water washing about inside her. Once or twice Frank held his breath as a threatening mass of water heaved up ahead, but in each case she lurched across it safely, and presently they found smoother water under another crag. He gave a sigh of relief when at length they reached the cove and beached her upon the shingle. They turned her over to empty before they ran her up, and then Harry sat down upon a boulder. Frank already had discovered that he seldom talked of anything they had done as though it were an exploit.

"I'm quite puzzled about that schooner," he said presently.

"Why?"

Harry paused and thought a moment. "Well, it's a sure thing she's the vessel that crept past us the morning we were lying beneath the point, and though she's been seen three or four times now there's no notice in the papers of any arrival that seems to fit her. She has the look of being built for the Canadian sealing trade, and most of the craft in that business are mighty smart vessels."

"Doesn't a ship have to carry papers saying where she's from and where she's going?"

"Oh, yes," assented Harry. "Still, she might clear from somewhere in Canada, say for the halibut fishing—I've heard they're trying to start it there—or something that would keep her out a month or so. Then, as there is no end of quiet inlets in British Columbia and a good many here, she could run up and down from one to another and go back with a few fish, and there'd be nothing to show what she had been doing in the meanwhile."

"You think it's something illegal?"

"If it is anything honest I don't see why she was beating up without her lights in the strength of the tide, when she'd have slacker water over toward the other side, only there'd be a chance of her being seen from the Seattle boat if she ran across yonder. Now it's a general idea that there's a good deal of dope—that's opium—smuggled into this country, and now and then Chinamen, too. Our people won't have any more of them, but though they have no trouble in getting into Canada, they seem to like the States better. I guess wages are higher."

"Have you talked to your father about it?"

"I told him what we'd seen the other time and he looked kind of amused, or as if he didn't want to be bothered about the thing; though that may not have been it, either. Unless he tells you right out, you can never figure on what he's thinking. Anyway, I'll say nothing more to him unless there's some particular reason."

Harry was afterward sorry that he had arrived at this decision, and, for that matter, so was his father, but it was the next morning before this came about. In the meanwhile the boys went back to the ranch, and soon afterward retired to rest in the room they now shared. Frank went to sleep at once, and it was some time later when, awaking suddenly, he fancied that Harry had left his bed, which was fixed against the opposite wall. A faint light from outside crept into the room, and Frank made out a black figure standing by the open window. Slipping softly to the floor he moved toward it and Harry raised his hand warningly when he joined him.

"What are you doing here?" Frank inquired.

"Well," answered Harry, "since you ask me, I don't quite know, but I fancied I heard somebody about the ranch. Keep still and listen."

He spoke in a low and rather strained voice, and Frank, who was uneasily impressed by it, leaned out of the window. There was a moon somewhere in the sky, but it was obscured by clouds, and only a dim, uncertain light filtered down. It showed the great black firs which rose, a rampart of impenetrable darkness, beyond the rather less shadowy clearing, across part of which the fruit trees stretched. Then ran back, in regular rows, little clumps of deeper obscurity which presently grew blurred and faded into one another. The wind had apparently dropped again, for it was impressively still.

"I can't hear anything," whispered Frank.

"I'm not sure that I did," rejoined Harry. "It may be that seeing that schooner put the thing into my head, but we'll wait a little now that we're up."

For a couple of minutes they waited in silence. Then Harry suddenly gripped his companion's arm.

"Look!" he whispered. "Across the clearing—yonder!"

Frank fancied that he could make out a shadowy object in the open space between the fruit trees and the forest. It was very dim and indistinct, and he realized that he would not have noticed it only that it moved. Shortly afterward it disappeared and a faint rattle like that made by two pieces of wood jarring together came out of the deep gloom beneath the firs.

"The fence," suggested Harry. "It sounded like the top rails going down."

The fence was made of split rails interlocked together in the usual manner without the use of nails, and it seemed to Frank very probable that anybody climbing over it in the darkness would be apt to knock one or two of them down. The question was who would be likely to climb over it, since there was no one living within some miles of the ranch. Then he caught another sound which seemed farther off. It suggested the crackle of rotten branches or torn-down undergrowth, but it ceased almost immediately.

"Slip on your things," whispered Harry. "I'm going down."

In a few moments they crept softly down the stairway barefooted, and Harry opened the outer door very cautiously. He picked up an ax outside, and they moved silently around the house, stopping now and then to listen. There was only a deep stillness. Nothing seemed to move; though Frank wished that he had at least a good thick stick in his hand. He had an uncomfortable feeling that they might come upon a man hiding in some strip of deeper gloom as they slowly crept along the wall. When at length they had satisfied themselves that there was nobody about, Harry sat down.

"I can't figure out this thing," he mused. "It seems to me that whoever those strangers were they haven't been near the house, and it's a quiet country, anyway." He glanced down at his bare feet. "I'd go along and look around the barn and stables only that I'd certainly stub my toes, and it wouldn't be any use. Nobody steals horses around here. They couldn't get rid of them if they did."

The outbuildings stood at some little distance from the house, and Frank, who remembered that they had strewn the trail to them with broken twigs in dragging some branches from the slashing, agreed with his companion that it would not be wise to traverse it in the darkness with unprotected feet.

"Couldn't you slip into the kitchen and get our boots?" he suggested.

"Not without waking dad," answered Harry. "He's in the next room, and he sleeps lightly. I'm not anxious to bring him out if no harm's been done."

"He'd get angry?"

"No, he'd only smile; and somehow that makes you feel quite cheap and small. Besides"—and he hesitated—"there was another time, when I roused them for nothing; and I don't want to do it again. You wouldn't either, if you had stood as much about it from Jake as I've had to ever since."

They decided to say nothing about the matter unless some reason for doing so appeared in the morning, and creeping back through the house as silently as possible they went to bed. They awoke a little later than usual, and going down found Mr. Oliver standing at one side of the kitchen table rather grave of face, with Jake, who also looked thoughtful, opposite him. A strip of paper with some writing on it lay between them. Mr. Oliver looked around as the boys came in.

"Did either of you hear anything suspicious last night?" he asked.

"Yes," said Harry hesitatingly. "In fact, we came down."

He briefly related why they had done so, and Jake broke in:

"Then why in the name of wonder didn't you call somebody?"

"It's a reasonable question," said Mr. Oliver.

Harry explained with some diffidence that they were afraid of being laughed at, and Frank felt a little uncomfortable under the rancher's steady gaze.

"Well," said the latter dryly, "I suppose your idea was natural, and we'll let it go at that. It's perhaps scarcely worth while to point out that most people get laughed at now and then, and there's no reason for believing that it hurts them. I wonder if you will be surprised to hear that my team has gone?"

They were certainly somewhat startled.

"I found this stuck up on the stable door," said Jake, pushing the strip of paper across toward them.

The boys read the straggling writing: "If you want your team back keep your mouth shut."

For a moment they looked at each other in silence, and then Mr. Oliver turned to them.

"It's all we know in the meanwhile. Have you anything more to tell us?"

Harry diffidently mentioned the schooner, and his father drew down his brows.

"Whether her appearance has any connection with the matter is more than I can say, but I'll sail up to the settlement this morning. You and Frank can go on with the drain cutting while I am away."

Just then Miss Oliver came in to get breakfast ready, and when the meal was finished the two boys made for the clearing where they were cutting a trench. When they reached their destination Harry sat down and pushed back his hat.

"This thing isn't very clear to me, but I'm beginning to get the drift of it," he announced. "It's quite likely that dad knows a good deal more about it than I do, but until he has it all worked out he won't tell. First of all, we'll allow that they're smugglers on that schooner. They borrowed two of our horses and that fixes it."

"You couldn't smuggle a great deal on two horses," Frank pointed out.

"Sure," admitted Harry. "Still, they might have picked up another team somewhere else, and you want to remember that it only pays to smuggle things that are valuable and can be easily moved. Now one packhorse load of dope would be worth a good many dollars, and you can't move anything much easier than a man. He's got feet."

This was incontestable, but Frank considered the matter.

"If you turned a number of Chinamen loose in the bush wouldn't they be recognized as strangers at any settlement they reached and have to give an account of themselves to somebody?"

"The trouble is that, although I believe they have to carry papers of some kind, it's mighty hard to tell one Chinaman from another and they all work into each other's hands."

"Your idea is that the smugglers have confederates?"

"They have them, sure," said Harry. "There's some diking being done on a salt marsh not far away, and the last time I was there it struck me there were some hard-looking white toughs on the workings. Then there's a small Chinese colony behind the settlement, and it's thick bush with only a few ranches for some leagues beyond. Just the kind of country for running dope through."

"Are the ranchers likely to stand in?"

"No, not in a general way, but it's possible that a man here and there living by himself in the bush would say nothing if they borrowed a horse or two. It's not nice to have a gang of toughs up against you."

"Your father doesn't seem inclined to look at it that way."

Harry laughed. "I'll allow that there's a good deal of sense in dad. It would be clear to him that he couldn't well give them away afterward if he did nothing this time. They'd certainly have got him; and dad's not the man to let a gang of dope runners order him round." He paused a moment, and added significantly: "If they try any bluffing in this case there'll be trouble."

Frank asked no further questions and they set about the trenching.

CHAPTER VI
AT THE HELM

Mr. Oliver did not come back until nightfall. He said nothing about his visit to the settlement and several days passed before the boys heard anything further of the matter. In the meanwhile they went on with the drain they were cutting across a swampy strip of clearing, and one afternoon they stood in the bottom of the four-foot trench. Harry was then busy with a grubhoe, cutting through the roots and breaking up the wet soil, which his companion flung out with a long-handled shovel. It was unpleasantly hot, and the flies were troublesome. Frank's hands were too muddy to brush them away and they crawled about his face and into his ears. He had already decided that draining was about the last occupation he would have chosen for a scorching afternoon, had the choice been open to him.

He stood, stripped to shirt and trousers, in about a foot of water, and because he had not learned the trick of pitching out the soil, part of every shovelful fell back upon him. His shirt was spattered all over, and patches of sticky mire glued it to his skin. There was no doubt that ranching was considerably less romantic than he had supposed it to be, and logging and ditching struck him as particularly uninteresting and somewhat barbarous work, but he was beginning to realize that all the agricultural prosperity of his country was founded on toil of a very similar kind. The wheat and the fruit trees would not grow until man with patient labor had prepared the soil for them, and, what was more significant, Mr. Oliver had made it plain that their yield varied in direct proportion with the work bestowed on them. Nature's alchemy, it seemed, could transmute the effort of straining muscle into golden sheaves, glowing-tinted apples, and velvet-skinned peaches and prunes.

It was clear to Frank that if he meant to become a rancher he must make up his mind to face a good many unpleasant tasks, and he swung up the mire shovelful by shovelful, though his back and limbs were aching and he had to work in a horribly cramped position. He was young, and though there were times when the work seemed almost too much for him, it was consoling to feel when he laid down his tools at night that he was growing harder and tougher with every day's toil, for his muscles were now beginning to obey instead of mastering him. He could go on for several hours after they commenced to ache, without its costing him any great effort.

By and by, however, there was an interruption, and Frank was by no means sorry when Mr. Oliver came up with a stranger and called them out of the trench.

"This is Mr. Barclay whose business is connected with the collection of the United States revenue," he said. "I believe he would like a little talk with you."

He walked away and left them with the stranger, who sat down on a log and took out a cigar. He was a little man and rather stout, dressed carelessly in store clothes, with a big soft hat and a white shirt which bulged up above the opening in his half-buttoned vest. It occurred to Frank that he looked like a country doctor. From out rather bushy eyebrows shone a pair of whimsical, twinkling eyes. When he had lighted his cigar he indicated the trench with a large, plump hand.

"Been making all that hole yourselves?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," replied Harry.

"Interesting work?"

"That depends on how you look at it," said Harry flippantly. "Would you like to try?"

Mr. Barclay waved his hand. "It isn't necessary. Did something of the same kind years ago—only, if I remember, it was rather wetter."

"Where was that?" Harry inquired with an air of languid politeness, at which Frank felt inclined to chuckle.

"Place called Forks Butte Creek. It was a twenty-foot trench."

Harry seemed astonished and his manner suddenly changed.

"You were with the boys at Forks Butte when they swung the creek?"

"Sure," assented Mr. Barclay with a laugh. "I didn't expect you'd have heard of it. You certainly weren't ranching then."

"I've heard of it lots of times," declared Harry, turning excitedly to Frank. "It was one of the biggest things ever done by a few men this side of the Cascades. The old-timers talk about it yet. A mining row—there were about a dozen of them working some alluvial claims on a disputed location. I don't know the whole of it, but the thing turned upon the frontage, and they stood off a swarm of jumpers while they shifted the creek."

"Something like that," said Mr. Barclay. "In those days they interpreted the mining laws with a certain amount of sentiment, which—and in some respects it's a pity—they don't do now." He paused and flicked the ash from his cigar. "I understand you have been seeing a mysterious schooner."

His tone was sufficiently ironical to put Harry on his mettle, and he furnished a full and particular account of the vessel. When he had finished Mr. Barclay glanced at him with amusement in his eyes.

"You have an idea there might be smugglers on board of her?" he suggested.

"It's more than an idea. I'm sure."

"I wonder if you could tell me why?"

It was rather difficult to answer, but Harry made the attempt, furnishing his questioner with half a dozen reasons which did not seem to have much effect on him.

"Well," he persisted, "you're convinced she had opium and Chinamen on board her?"

"Aren't you?"

Mr. Barclay looked up with a smile. "At the present moment I can't form an opinion. After all, it's possible."

He rose, and as he was strolling away toward the house Harry's face contracted into an indignant frown.

"That man must have been cooking, or something of the kind, at Forks Butte," he broke out contemptuously. "Anyway, it was the last time he ever did anything worth talking about. Did you ever run up against such a stuffed image?"

Frank was far from certain that this description was altogether applicable to the stranger, but Harry seemed so much annoyed that he did not express his opinion, and they got down into the trench again. When they went back to the ranch an hour later they heard that Mr. Oliver and Mr. Barclay had gone to a neighboring ranch and intended to make a journey into the bush if they could borrow horses. When the boys were eating breakfast the next morning Miss Oliver turned to Harry.

"We have run out of pork, and the flour is almost gone," she said. "I meant to ask your father to bring some when he went up to the settlement, but I forgot it, and Jake must bring in those steers to-day."

"We'll go," broke in Harry quickly. "There's a nice sailing breeze."

His aunt looked doubtful. "You have never been so far with the sloop unless Jake was with you; and isn't there a nasty tide-rip somewhere? Still, I don't know what I shall do unless I get the flour."

She yielded when Harry insisted; and shortly afterward the boys paddled off to the sloop and made the canoe fast astern. They set the big gaff mainsail and Harry sculled her out of the cove before he hoisted the jib. Then he made Frank take the helm.

"It's a head wind until we're round the point yonder, but you'll have to learn to sail her sometime," he said. "The first thing to remember is that she'll only lie up at an angle to the wind and if you make it too small she won't go through the water. You want to feel a slight strain on the tiller."

He hauled the sheets in until the boom hung just over the boat's quarter, and while Frank grasped the tiller she slid out into open water. Bright sunshine smote the little tumbling green ridges that had here and there crests of snowy foam, and she bounded over them with a spray cloud flying at her bows. She seemed to be making an excellent pace, but Harry shook his head.

"No," he objected, "you're letting her fall off. That is, the angle you're sailing her at is too big. She'll go faster that way, but she won't go so far to windward. Don't pull so much on your tiller and she'll come up closer."

Frank tried it, but the boat sailed more slowly, and presently her mainsail flapped.

"Now you're too close," warned Harry. "You're trying to head her right into the wind. Pull your helm up again."

Frank did so, and when the boat gathered speed he ventured a question.

"If you keep her too close to the wind she won't sail, and if you let her fall off she's not going where you want. How do you find out the exact angle she ought to make?"

Harry laughed. "It depends on the boat, the cut of her sails, and how smart you are at the helm. One man would shove her to windward a point closer than another could and keep her sailing faster, too. It's a thing that takes time to learn, and there are men you couldn't teach to sail a boat at all."

Frank found that it became easier by degrees, though his companion did not appear altogether satisfied. The sloop had dipped her lee rail just level with the water now, and she rushed along, bounding with a lurch and splash over the small froth-tipped seas. He began to understand how one arrived at the proper angle by the slant at which the wind struck his face as well as by watching the direction of the seas which came charging down to meet her in regular formation. Then Harry said that as they had stretched out far enough to clear the point they would go about upon the other tack.

"Shove your helm down—that's to lee—not too hard!" he ordered, and as Frank obeyed him there was a sharp banging of sail cloth and the boat, swinging around, swayed upright.

In another moment the wind was on her opposite side, and she was heading off at an angle to her previous course, while Harry with one foot braced against the lee coaming struggled to flatten in the sheet on the jib. The big mainboom had swung over of its own accord amidst a great clatter of blocks. By and by when the point slid away to lee of them Harry told Frank to pull his helm up, and then he pointed to a confused mass of gray rocks and trees rising above the glistening water several miles away.

"Now," he said, "she'll go there straight, and all you have to do is to keep her bowsprit on yonder head. It's a fair wind, and when you've got that you want to slack out the sheets until the sails are as far outboard as they'll go and still keep full. If your sheets are too tight, you'll know it by the weight on the tiller."

He let a couple of ropes run out through the clattering blocks, and the sloop, slanting over a little farther, seemed to leap forward. The sparkling green ridges which came tumbling up on one side of her swung her aloft with the foam boiling along the edge of her lee deck, and then surged away in turn and let her drop while another came rolling up. Instead of being a mere thing of wood and canvas she seemed to become animate, charged with vitality. The springy way she rushed along was strangely exhilarating. Frank became fascinated watching her bows go up and the snowy, straining sail sweep across the dazzling blue at every lurch, while he became conscious of a sense of control and mastery as he gripped the tiller. He felt that he could do what he wanted with this wonderful rushing thing.

For she was certainly wonderful. There was no doubt of that, because among all of man's works and inventions there is none that more nearly approaches the simplicity of perfection and adaptability to its purpose than the modern sailboat. It has taken centuries to evolve her, each builder adding a little to the work of those who went before, and balancing in her making, often without knowing it, the great natural forces one against another, until at last science justified what man did, so that with this frail creation one may brave the untrammeled winds of heaven and the onslaught of the seas.

By and by the headland they had been nearing thrust them off their course, and outside it lay a nest of islets, with a strong stream running up between. As it ran to windward it broke up the regular, breeze-driven waves into short, foaming combers with hollowed breasts and tumbling tops which flung up wisps of spray. Frank glanced at this tumult with some anxiety, and it was a relief to him when his companion offered to take the tiller.

"You had better let me have her," Harry said. "She wants handling in a jump like that. I'd heave a reef down to reduce the sail, only that it would take us some time to tie it in and there'll be smoother water once we're past the islands. As we'll have to beat through, you can get the sheets in."

Frank found this no easy task, for he had no idea that the sails could pull so hard, and Harry had to help him with one hand. Then the latter's face became intent as they plunged into the turmoil. The seas looked big and angry now. In fact, as usually happens, they looked a good deal bigger than they really were, but they were breaking in a threatening manner and came on to meet the sloop in white-topped phalanxes. She went over some with a disconcerting plunge and swoop, but she rammed a few of the rest, driving her jib and bows in and flinging the brine all over her when she swung them up. Her deck was sluicing, and every now and then a green and white cascade came frothing over the coaming into the well. Frank, however, noticed that, instead of letting the boat meet the combers, his companion occasionally pulled his tiller up, so that, swinging round a little, she brought the ridge of frothing water farther on her side as she plunged over it.

"I thought you had to face a nasty sea head-on," he said.

"Did you?" Harry responded. "Then watch that smaller one."

A slope of water came tumbling on some yards ahead, and as the boy eased his helm down an inch or two the bows came up to meet the sea. They struck it full in its hollowed breast, and the next moment there was a shock and half the deck was lost in a rush of foam.

"Like me to plug another?" laughed Harry.

Frank begged him not to do it. The result of the experiment was rather alarming, and Harry let her fall off a little to dodge the onslaught of the succeeding combers, until at last they grew smaller as the stream spread itself out in open water. Then he gave Frank some further instruction.

"If you were pulling or paddling a small craft it would be safer to bring her head-on, because you have to remember that she'd be going mighty slow, but when you're sailing a boat that's carrying her speed it's evident that you don't want to ram her right at a comber. If you do, she's bound to go bang into it. When you see one that looks threatening you let her fall off slightly and she goes over slanting." He broke off for a moment with a laugh. "Seems to me I'm always on the 'teach.' You come here and take the tiller while I get some of the water out of her. You can head for that point to starboard."

He busied himself with the bucket while Frank steered the boat, and an hour or so later they ran into a little sheltered inlet where they brought her head to wind and pitched the anchor over. After that they bailed out the half-swamped canoe, and, dropping into her, paddled ashore.

CHAPTER VII
A WARNING

Frank looked about him with some curiosity when they reached the settlement, which struck him as a singularly unattractive place. In a hole chopped out of the forest that crept close to the edge of the water stood a few small log houses and several roughly boarded shacks. Tall fir stumps surrounded them, and here and there provision cans and old boots lay among the fern, in which a few lean hogs were rooting. Farther on, however, there was an opening in the bush, for the boy could catch the gleam of water between the trees, and in one place the great columnar trunks cut against the soft green of a meadow. The grass was bright with sunshine, but dim shadow hung over the forest-shrouded settlement.

"A forlorn spot," said Harry. "I don't know why the folks first pitched here, but they raise a little fruit, and now and then a Seattle boat comes along. It's thin gravel soil on this strip, and that's probably the reason they haven't done any more chopping—there are salt meadows farther along—but if they'd any hustlers among them they'd have got out their axes and let a little daylight in." He waved his hand contemptuously. "They're a mean crowd, anyway, except the storekeeper, and I've wondered how he makes a living out of them. Now we'll go along and get that flour."

They moved on down the trail, which was torn up by the passage of jumper sledges, until they reached a frame building which Frank had not noticed at first. It stood back a little and was larger and neater than any of the rest. A veranda ran along the front of it and in one window small flour bags and more provision cans were displayed. A couple of men in blue shirts and overalls lounged smoking on the veranda in a manner which suggested that they had never hurried themselves in their lives, and they seemed to be the only inhabitants of the place. As the boys walked up the stairway Harry pointed to a notice pasted up in the window. Frank stopped and read it aloud.

"Twenty dollars will be paid to any one identifying the man who recently drove a pair of horses off the Oliver ranch."

With a laugh Harry looked up defiantly at the lounging men. "That's Oliver's answer," he said. "They told him to keep his mouth shut."

One of the men grinned. "Seems to me it was good advice. Do you figure any one round here is going to earn those twenty dollars?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't," he answered. "Still, my only reason for believing it is that the money isn't big enough. Anyway, that notice will serve its purpose. It makes it clear that we mean to fight."

The lounger grinned again and Harry, marching past him with his head up, entered the store. A man who was sitting behind the counter rose when the boys came in and raised his hand in a manner which seemed to indicate that caution was desirable.

"You're wanting some groceries?" he asked.

"Flour," Harry answered. "A seventy-pound bag, if you've got it. Some pork, too—you know the piece we take. You might send them down to the beach, if there's anybody in the place who's not afraid of carrying a flour bag."

The storekeeper smiled and strolled casually toward the window. Coming back he leaned upon the counter.

"Your aunt's mighty particular about her pork," he said, raising his voice a little. "Better come along into the back store and see what I've got."

They followed him into a smaller room, where he first of all threw several big slabs of pork down upon a board, making, it seemed to Frank, as much noise as possible.

"Twelve pounds in this lot," he said loudly, then lowering his voice: "Those fellows outside haven't gone and I don't want them to hear. You haven't found your horses yet?"

Harry admitted that they had not done so, and the man nodded gravely.

"Well," he said, "I guess they'll turn up presently. I couldn't tell your father that because there were other folks in the store when he handed me the notice. What I want to say is that he's not wise in bluffing the boys. You had better tell him that's my opinion."

"How much do you know about the thing?" Harry asked directly.

"Very little, but I can guess a good deal. Quite enough, anyway, to convince me that you folks had better lie quiet, and let the boys alone."

Harry glanced scornfully toward the veranda.

"Pshaw!" he growled. "We don't want to meddle, but it's another matter to let those slouches drive off our team. That's my view, though I don't know what my father means to do about it. He hasn't told me."

"He never does tell folks," the storekeeper answered with a trace of dryness. "I guess he'll wait, and kick when he's ready, but you tell him from me that he's up against quite a big thing." He raised his voice: "Well, I'll send that pork and flour along."

The boys went out and met one of the loungers strolling casually across the store, though Frank had a suspicion that he had come in softly some time earlier. As they were walking down to the beach Harry glanced up the strip of sheltered water.

"There's a Chinese camp a little way up the creek," he said. "Nothing much to see there, but we may as well take a look at it."

They paddled across a strip of shadow where the reflections of spreading cedar and towering fir floated inverted in the still, green water until the ripple from the bows broke across and banished them. After that they slid out into the sunlight where a narrow belt of cultivated land ran back on either hand. On one side it was partly hidden by a bank of soil, at the end of which three or four men were leisurely working. They merely looked down as the canoe slid past.

"Hard cases!" said Harry presently. "If I was sheriff I'd clean this hole right out. There are decent folks here, but the curious thing is that when you let two or three toughs into a place they seem to get on top."

Frank made no comment, and soon they were once more paddling into the shadow of the forest. The creek was growing smaller, and at length they ran the canoe ashore and struck into a narrow trail through the bush.

It was now getting on into the afternoon and Frank felt sorry that they had not eaten the lunch Miss Oliver had prepared for them before they left the sloop. It was very hot, and very still, except when now and then the drumming of a blue grouse came sharply out of the shadows. By and by, however, the wood became a little thinner, and Harry pointed toward an opening between the trees.

"That's the place," he said. "Not much to look at, but it's good land. You can see the maples yonder—that's always a favorable sign—and somebody with money has lately bought quite a piece of it to start a fruit ranch on. The Chows have taken the contract for clearing it, and if any dope has been landed in the neighborhood they're probably mixed up with the thing."

Frank glanced toward the opening, and sitting, as he was, in dim shadow, the open space he looked out upon seemed flooded with dazzling brightness. In the background, and some distance away, little, blue-clad figures were toiling with axes that flashed as they swung amidst a confusion of branches and fallen logs, the staccato chunk of the blades ripping through the heavy stillness. Nothing else, however, seemed to move, and the air was filled with a languorous, resinous smell. Rows of stumps stretched out from the spot on which the Chinamen were working, breaking off before a cluster of bark and split-board shacks that stood beneath the edge of the forest. A man dressed in loose, blue garments was seated motionless outside one of the shacks, before two logs, from between which a little smoke curled straight up into the air. Presently the man stood up, and just then Harry seized Frank's shoulder.

"Look round a little—to the left," he whispered.

Frank did so and was astonished to see another man slip quietly out of the forest and approach the shack. His face was not discernible, but there was something peculiar in the way he walked, and his dress made it evident that he was a white man.

"Have you seen him before?" Harry asked softly.

"I can't locate him, but I've an idea that he's not quite a stranger," said Frank.

"Well," said Harry, "I'm open to make a guess at him. Just as the schooner went about that night I had a look at her helmsman. He had his back to me, but it was moonlight, and I could see that one shoulder hunched up in a kind of curious manner."

Frank looked again and it seemed to him that there was something unusual in the way the man held his shoulder. It was somewhat higher than the other, though it hardly amounted to a deformity.

"Slip in behind that tree," whispered Harry, pointing toward the bush. "We'll creep up through the shadow if he goes into the shack."

They spent some minutes moving forward in and out among the trees, and in the meanwhile Frank saw the stranger enter the shack and the Chinaman follow him. Then he and Harry walked out of the bush scarcely a score of yards from the rude building, and headed straight for it. As they approached, the Chinaman became visible in the doorway, where he stood waiting for them. He appeared to be an old man, for his face was lined and seamed, but it was absolutely expressionless, an impassive yellow mask, and Frank felt baffled and repelled by it. As soon as it was evident that the boys intended to enter his dwelling, he moved aside, and when they stood in the little, shadowy room Frank was astonished to see that there was nobody else in it. This seemed incomprehensible, for there was only one door in the place. In the meanwhile the Chinaman was looking at them quietly.

"It's quite hot," observed Harry.

"Velly hot," assented the other, who did not seem in any way disturbed by the fact that they had so unceremoniously marched in.

Harry appeared embarrassed after this, as though he did not know what to say next, until he was evidently seized by an inspiration.

"Got any chow, John?" he asked.

"Velly good chow," answered the Chinaman. "Lice, blue glouse, smokee fishee."

"Blue grouse!" said Harry disgustedly aside to Frank. "It's the nesting season, but I guess that wouldn't count for much with them." He turned to his host. "I'm not a heathen. Savvy cook American? Got any flour you can make biscuits or flapjacks of?"

"You leavee chow to me," said the other. "Cookee all same big hotel Seattle, Tacoma, San F'lisco."

"It's quite likely," said Harry, looking round at Frank. "You can trust a Chinaman to turn out a decent meal. I'll walk round a bit in the meanwhile; you can sit here and rest."

Frank did not particularly wish to rest, but he fancied that his companion had given him a hint, and while the Chinaman busied himself with his pots and pans he sat down outside the shack. He had been up early that morning, and after the steady, arduous work at the ranch it was pleasant to sit still in the strip of shadow and let his eyes wander idly about the clearing. Among other things, he noticed that a little trickle of water flowed across it, and that the soil was quaggy in the neighborhood. He concluded that the stranger, who had so mysteriously disappeared, must have crossed the wet place.

It was some little time before Harry came back and the Chinaman then set out their dinner. Frank had no idea what some of it consisted of and his companion was unable to enlighten him, but it was excellent. When they had finished, the man turned to Harry.

"One dolla," he said gravely.

Harry handed it over readily and smiled at Frank when they strolled back into the bush.

"It wasn't what I'd figured on when I first walked in, but I had to make some excuse," he said. "Just now I'd very much like to know how far it went with him." He paused and looked thoughtful. "I guess it wasn't a very long way. The image is ahead of us by a dollar."

Frank laughed. "You had some reason for going for that walk?"

"Oh, yes," replied Harry. "I wanted to make sure of things, and the ground was soft. There were some footprints in it—going from the shack—and they'd been made quite lately by a white man's boot. John sticks to his slipper things in a general way. Anyhow, it was the man we saw who left those tracks."

"How do you know that?"

"There were a lot of others about, but they'd been made earlier. The water had got into them, but there was very little in those I was interested in."

Frank was conscious that this was a point which would probably have escaped his notice, but he had not lived in the bush and learned to use his eyes.

"It's very curious how the fellow got out of the shack without our seeing him," he said.

"It looks curious until you begin to think. Now, though I tried to keep my eye on it all the while, the trees kept getting between me and the shack as we made for it, and what I couldn't see you couldn't see either. You were close behind me, which, in one way, was where we were wrong. If we had crept in well apart, the same tree wouldn't have bothered both of us, though if we'd done that it would have doubled the chances of our being seen."

"A tree isn't such a very big thing," Frank objected.

"No," said Harry. "The point is that it will shut an object a good deal bigger than itself out of your sight." He stopped a moment and pointed toward a neighboring cedar. "We'll say that one's three feet in diameter, but, as you're standing, it will shut off a good deal more than a track three feet wide through the bush. You want to run a line from your eye to both edges of the trunk and then carry them out behind it. The farther you run them, the farther they get apart, and as you can't see round a corner, everything in the wedge they enclose is shut out from view. Got that into you? It will come in useful when you're trailing a deer."

It was quite clear to Frank now that it had been explained, but his companion went on.

"Well," he added, "it wouldn't have taken that fellow more than a few seconds to slip out of the shack and in behind it. Then if he kept it between him and us he'd be hidden until he reached the bush."

"Yes," said Frank. "It must mean that he saw us, and didn't want us to see him."

"You're getting quite smart," said Harry with a grin. "I don't know if you noticed it, but you trod on a rotten branch that smashed. He didn't want us to know him again, but I'd pick that fellow anywhere by his back and walk. Now why was he so anxious that we shouldn't see him talking to the Chinaman?"

It was a suggestive question, but Frank could not answer it, and Harry said nothing further. Reaching the canoe they paddled down the creek until they came abreast of the sloop and saw the provisions lying upon the shingle some little distance from the water, for the tide had ebbed since their arrival. When they had run the canoe in Frank assisted Harry in getting the flour bag on his back, but gave a sudden cry of dismay as a white cloud flew all over him.

"Hold on!" he cried. "Put it down. It's running out!"

Harry dropped the bag and drew down his brows as he gazed at the little pile of flour which lay at his feet. Then he suddenly stooped down.

"The bag seemed a sound one," Frank suggested.

"Oh, yes," said Harry shortly. "There's only one thing the matter with it. See here," and he laid his finger on a long slit. "Somebody has stuck a knife into it."

"A mean trick!" Frank broke out wrathfully.

Harry stood up with a flash in his eyes. "It's rather more than that. It's a hint. Anyway, if you'll get hold of the other end we'll pack the bag down with the cut uppermost."

In spite of this precaution they spilled a good deal of the flour before they got it on board the sloop, but Harry said no more about the matter, and hoisting sail they slid out of the inlet with a faint breeze abeam of them. They found it fair and the breeze only a little stronger when they had left the woods behind, and Frank sat at the tiller while the sloop glided rapidly through the smooth blue water with no more than a drowsy gurgle beneath her bows. The tide was running down with them now and it was only when he glanced toward the beach that he realized how fast they were going.

A pleasant salt odor of drying weed was mingled with the scent of the firs. In front of them a wonderful vista of white snow mountains emerged from fleecy cloud, and far beneath the silvery vapor appeared the faint and shadowy blurs of distant hillsides clothed with mighty forest. Overhead the big white sail swayed languidly to and fro, cutting sharply into the blue, and Frank felt that he would like to sail on like this for hours, lounging at the helm, and listening to the water as it slipped along the sides. With a light fair wind he could guide the boat wherever he wished by the slightest touch of the tiller, and it was pleasant to see how steadily he could keep her bowsprit pointing to a low rocky head that rose, a patch of soft blue shadow, against the evening light.

The voyage, however, came to an end almost too soon, and the rocks and firs were growing dim when they ran into the cove and picked up their mooring buoy. After they had stowed and covered the sails they went ashore, and both boys were very tired and warm when they reached the homestead. Harry's clothes were covered with flour, which had left a white trail along the way. Miss Oliver was standing in the lamplight when they came in and noticed the white patches on their clothes.

"You have let him give you a burst bag!" she exclaimed.

Harry looked meaningly at Frank. "No," he said, "I think it was all right when it left the store and I don't think we have spilled more than a few pounds. Perhaps we had better skip it into the barrel. It will save the stuff from running out when you move it."

They managed to carry it away between them; and when they had emptied it Harry turned to Frank.

"If she starts talking about that bag, head her off on to something else," he said. "I don't want her to get imagining trouble every time we leave the ranch."

When Miss Oliver resumed the subject at supper Frank attempted to divert her attention, and fancied that he succeeded, though he wondered why she smiled at times. When the boys had gone to their room she picked up the bag and stretched it out under the light. Then her face grew grave as she saw the slit in it. Being a clever woman, however, she decided not to mention her suspicions.

CHAPTER VIII
SALMON SPEARING

When the boys came in for breakfast next morning Jake was standing in the kitchen, and Miss Oliver sat opposite him looking unusually thoughtful.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked.

Jake turned toward him slowly.

"I don't know that there's anything very wrong," he said. "Leader's come back."

Leader was the name of one of the missing horses, and Frank started as he remembered what the storekeeper had said, but feeling Miss Oliver's eyes upon him, turned his head and looked out into the clearing.

"Where's Tillicum?" inquired Harry.

"That," replied Jake, "is more than I can tell. Leader was standing outside the stable when I went along and I can't make out why the other horse wasn't with him. He'd have come with Leader if anybody had turned them into the trail together."

Harry called to Frank and went out of the door. Jake followed them to the stable, where they found the horse looking rather jaded, but except for that very little the worse. Jake nodded reassuringly when Harry had felt him over.

"No sign of anything wrong," he said. "There was a good deal of dried mud on him before I fixed him up, and he seemed mighty keen on his corn. They hadn't given him very much."

"What do you make of it?" Harry asked.

"About as much as you do," answered Jake. "They turned him loose on the trail when they'd done with him, and that's all there is to it. I guess the question is what they've done with Tillicum. One thing's certain. If he doesn't turn up, your father's going to be mighty mad."

Harry agreed that this would be very probable, though he did not think his father would show it. As there was nothing more to be said they went back to the house, where, somewhat to their relief, Miss Oliver made no allusion to the affair, and they proceeded quietly to eat breakfast.

"Are there any spring salmon in the river?" she asked presently, looking across at Harry.

"Yes," he responded, "there are a few coming up."

"Then you might take Frank with you this morning and try to get me one. I dare say Jake will smoke it." Miss Oliver smiled at Frank. "You don't get salmon prepared that way back East."

"We have it canned," said Frank. "I've an idea I've seen some smoked, but I can't remember. Is it very nice? I thought you didn't care for salmon here."

"Fresh salmon," Jake said curtly, "is only good for hogs, and if you keep it long enough, for growing potatoes with. Still," he added thoughtfully, "I don't know that you call it fresh then."

Miss Oliver laughed. "Wait until you try it smoked—as Jake does it. He can prepare it as some of the Siwash do. I believe they taught him in British Columbia."

Jake shook his head solemnly. "No," he said, "I can't cure salmon as some of the Indians do. You'd get nothing like it in a New York hotel, but I guess I can dress it 'most as well as any white man. You go along and get me a fish, Harry. I'd try the pool by the big fall."

They set out a few minutes later, taking with them a pole which had a big iron hook lashed to it and a long Indian salmon spear. There was a small fork at one end of the latter on which were placed two nicely made bone barbs attached to the haft by strips of sinew. Harry removed them to show Frank that they would slip off their sockets easily. Leaving the clearing, they struck into a narrow trail through the bush, and after half an hour's scramble over fallen logs and through thick fern they reached the river.

It poured frothing out of shadowy forest and leaped over a rock ledge in a thundering fall, beneath which it swirled around a deep basin, and then after sweeping down a white rapid, spread out over a wide belt of stones. There were rocks on either side of it, and, as the trees could find no hold on them, warm sunlight streamed down upon the foaming water. Harry sat down on a ledge above the pool with the spear beside him and pointed to a great bird wheeling on slanted wings above the shallow.

"A fish eagle," he said. "Here are salmon making up."

Frank watched the circling of the majestic bird, which did not seem much afraid of them. It had a white head and a cruel beak, and once when it swept over him he noticed the fixed gaze of its cold, impassive eye. Splendid as it was, he somehow shrank from the thing. It looked so powerful and utterly merciless. When it stopped in the air, dropped, and struck, he saw a splash as a writhing, silvery creature was snatched up in its talons.

"Got him wrong!" cried Harry. "You watch. He'll have to let go again."

So far as Frank could see, the eagle had seized the salmon by the middle of its back, the fish twisting itself crossways as it was carried up into the air. The next moment there was a splash in the water and the bird swooped down again. When it rose it held its prey differently, and Frank fancied he could see one wicked claw gripping the fish close by the back of its neck, while the other was spread out toward its tail. In any case, the salmon did not seem able to wriggle now, and the eagle flew off with it and vanished among the tops of the black firs.

"Not a big fish, but I've a notion the eagle could lift a thing as heavy as itself," said Harry. "They're mighty powerful. It might be the one he dropped, though I think it's another."

Frank had no idea how much an eagle weighed, but he realized something of the capabilities of a bird that could carry off this fish apparently without an effort, and, what was more astonishing, drag the tremendously muscular creature out of the water which was its home. Then his companion touched his shoulder.

"Watch those two fellows in the eddy," said he. "They're going to rush the fall."

Frank saw two slim shadows shoot out beneath a wreath of circling foam and flash—which seemed the best word for it—through the crystal depths of the slacker part of the pool. They were lost in the snowy turmoil near the foot of the fall, and a few minutes passed before he saw them again. Then one shot out of the water like a bow that had suddenly straightened itself, gleamed resplendent with silver, and plunged into the foam again. Harry pointed him out the other, and though it was a moment or two before he could see it he marveled when he did. It had its dusky back toward him, for now and then the dorsal fin rose clear, and it was swimming up a thin cascade which poured down a steep slope of stone. That any creature should have strength enough to stem that rush of water seemed incredible, but there was no doubt that the fish was ascending inch by inch. Then it found a momentary harbor in a little pool just outside the main leap of the fall, and shot out of it again with its curious uncurving spring. Frank watched it eagerly when it dropped into the fall, and it was with a sense of sympathy that he saw its gallant efforts wasted as it was suddenly swept down. Before reaching the bottom, however, it had evidently rallied all its powers, for it flashed clear into the sunlight, and had recovered a fathom when he lost sight of it once more.

After that he glanced back toward the shallows and saw that other birds had appeared. He did not know what they were, and Harry could only tell him that they were fishhawks of some kind. As he watched them wheeling or stooping, dropping upon the sparkling stream, and screaming now and then, the boy began to form some idea of the desperate battle for existence that is fought daily and hourly by the lower creation.

"There don't seem to be a great many salmon," he remarked.

"It's a thin run," said Harry. "There'll probably be more of them in the next one. Once upon a time, as I expect you've heard, these rivers were so thick with fish that you could walk across their backs, though I'll allow I've never seen anything of that kind."

Frank was not astonished at the last admission. This brown-skinned, clear-eyed boy, who could sail a boat and hold the rifle straight, was not one to talk of the wonderful things he had seen and done. He left that to the whisky-faced sports of the saloons who were probably capable of butchering a crippled deer at fifty yards with the repeater.

"I suppose the salmon have plenty enemies," he suggested.

"Oh, yes," said Harry. "In the sea the seals and porpoises get their share of them. Then, as they head for the rivers, there are the fish traps, and in Canada the seine-net boats along the shore. After that when they're in fresh water they have to run the gauntlet of the Indians, birds, and bears."

"Bears?" Frank interrupted.

"Sure," said Harry. "They're quite smart fishers. Even the little minks get some of the salmon stranded in the shallow pools. The Indians set long baskets, narrow end downward, for them near the top of the falls. These, of course, are fresh from salt-water—you can see they're silvery—but they lose that brightness as they go up the larger rivers, and on the Columbia and Fraser they push on hundreds of miles, up tremendous cañons, up falls and rapids, toward the Rockies. Those that fetch headwaters are scarred and battered, with the bright scales and most of their fins and tails worn right off them. Once they're through with the spawning they die."

"Then they go straight to the place where they spawn?"

"Yes, the salmon's really a seafish. It's born in fresh water, but it goes down to the ocean as soon as it's big enough, and it's generally believed that it stays there three or four years, though it's a fact that we know mighty little about the salmon yet. Then it comes back to the same place and spawns and dies. You see, there's a constant succession coming up." He broke off with a laugh. "Now we'll try to get one. There are three or four big fellows yonder. All you have to do is to slash at them with the hook."

Frank perched himself upon a jutting shelf of rock, and presently two or three swift shadows flitted by. He swung up the pole and made a sudden sweep at them, only to see the hook splash two or three feet behind the last one's tail. Incidentally, he came very near to going headforemost into the pool. Then another fish swept toward him, and this time he landed the hook some inches in front of its nose, after which he made several more attempts, succeeding only in splashing himself all over. He was beginning to discover that his hands and eyes needed a good deal of training. One, it seemed, must judge speed and distance and strike simultaneously, but the trouble was that he needed a second or two to think, and, naturally, while he thought the fish got away.

By and by he turned and watched Harry, who had not struck once yet. He stood upon a ledge, alert, strung-up, and steady-eyed, but absolutely motionless, with the long spear running up above his shoulder. At last, however, he drove his right arm down and the beautiful, straight shaft sank into the pool. It stopped suddenly for a second, quivering, and then bent and twisted upward in the boy's clenched hands.

Frank ran toward him, wondering that the slender shaft did not immediately break, when he observed that one barb had slipped off its socket and that the fish, struck by it, was now held by the short length of sinew. A moment or two later Harry jerked it out upon the bank by a quick vertical movement and knocked it on the head. It lay still after this, a beautiful creature of some seven or eight pounds, with the sunlight gleaming on its silver scales. Frank glanced once more at the long spear. It occurred to him that this was also perfect in its way and could not have been better adapted to its purpose.

"It's curious that an Indian should be able to make a thing like that," he remarked. "I don't think a white man could turn out anything as handy, unless, of course, he had one to copy."

"The point is that it took the Siwash a mighty long while to make the salmon spear," said Harry. "It's quite likely they spent two hundred years over it. Their spears are all on the same pattern, so are their traps and canoes." Seeing a puzzled look cross Frank's face, he smiled. "An Indian is no smarter than a white man—in fact, when you stop to think of it, he's not half as smart, though most everything he makes is excellent. It's this way. If we want a saw for a new purpose or a different kind of wood, we write to the Disston people or somebody of the kind and they set their boss designer to work. He considers, and then because he knows all about the physical sciences he draws the thing on paper and sends it to the forges or grinding shops. In a general way, that saw does its work, though I guess if the designer had to use it for a year or two he'd make the next one better."

"Of course," agreed Frank.

"It's different with the Indians," Harry continued. "One fellow made a fish spear ever so long ago and found that it wouldn't do. He made the next one different and was satisfied with it, but his son made it a little longer and thinner. Then his grandson altered the barb, and his son added another one. After that each fellow made it a little handier, until nothing more could be done to it, and they stuck to the pattern." He turned and glanced at the spear. "This thing is the product of the skill of ever so many generations."

It was simple but convincing, for it explained the efficiency of the Indian's tools, and also why he had not progressed. He worked along the same line, sticking to one simple implement until he had perfected it, and, though this was his greatest disadvantage, the man who killed the fish generally made the spear. He got so far and stopped, content, and incapable of going any farther. The white man, on the other hand, changed his methods continually with his changing needs and, what counted more than all, he very seldom made the tools he used, because he had discovered that somebody who did nothing else could make them better. When the Americans of the Pacific Slope wanted salmon they did not whittle spears, but sent east to the cordage factories, whose owners brought in fibers from all over the world and spun the netting with which to build gigantic fish traps.

"We could do with another fish," ventured Harry. "Let's see if you can get one."

Frank took up his pole again. It was a heavy and clumsy affair, but Harry had told him that he would probably break the Indian spear. They waited awhile until another swift shadow swept around with the eddy beneath their feet.

"Hold on!" cried Harry. "Wait till the stream heads him and then strike as quick as you can."

The fish's speed was checked for a moment as it entered the furious rush beneath the fall, and Frank, who could just see its dusky back amidst the foam, swung his pole. There was a splash and then a curious shock which sent a thrill through him, and the haft jerked sharply in his hands.

"Heave him out!" cried Harry. "That thing won't break."

Frank tugged with all his might and the salmon flew up over his shoulder. The next moment he had seized it and was almost reluctant to let it go when his companion clubbed it on the head.

"Two's as many as we have any use for and we'll go along," said the latter. "We haven't made much of a show at that draining lately."

Frank would have preferred to stay where he was, but he followed Harry toward the bush, and soon after they struck a cleared trail to the ranch, which was, however, not the way they had come. A little later they were somewhat astonished to see a group of figures among the trees, and hurrying forward they found Mr. Oliver and Mr. Barclay talking to Jake, who apparently had been driving home two or three steers.

Mr. Oliver, looking unusually grave, nodded to the boys. "We have just met Jake," he said. "He tells me Tillicum's back a little way up the trail with a broken leg."

"I guess he's done," murmured Jake, adding significantly, "I wouldn't have left him like that if I'd had a gun."

"Go on with the steers," said Mr. Oliver. "We'll turn back."

The boys accompanied him and Mr. Barclay, and leaving the trail by and by where the bush was thinner they stopped before a pitiable sight. It was Tillicum who stood awkwardly before them, his head lowered and one leg that seemed distorted out of its usual shape hanging limp. Caked mire was spattered about the poor animal, its coat was foul, and every line of its body seemed expressive of pain and exhaustion. As it raised its drooping head and looked at them pitifully, Frank felt a thrill of hot anger against the outlaws who were responsible for its condition. Mr. Oliver stepped up to the horse and gently felt of its injured limb, after which he turned abruptly toward Mr. Barclay and Frank noticed that his face was set.

"There's only one thing to be done," he said. "Have you a pistol?"

"Haven't you?" his companion asked with a slight trace of astonishment in his tone.

"If I'd had one would I have wanted to borrow yours?" retorted Mr. Oliver.

"Well," said Mr. Barclay, "it's seldom I carry one, but in this case it seemed advisable." He put his hand into his pocket. "Here you are. It's a big caliber."

Mr. Oliver took the weapon and held it behind him, and turning back toward the horse, gently stroked its head. Then there was a flash and detonation, and the beast dropped like a stone. After a moment the rancher turned around with a very curious look in his eyes, with the smoking weapon clenched hard in his hand.

"I've had that faithful animal six years," he said in a harsh voice. "We'll get away."

They walked on in silence for a while, and then Mr. Barclay spoke.

"The breaking of its leg was probably an accident," he suggested.

"Yes," said Mr. Oliver. "It's possible he broke it after they turned him loose, but that doesn't seem to affect the case." He paused and looked around at his companion. "You understand that I'm with you right through this thing."

Nothing more was said until they approached the ranch, when Mr. Oliver turned to the boys.

"I'll take the fish," he said. "You can go on with whatever you were doing."

They moved away toward the drain, and when they reached it Harry stood still a moment or two.

"It's a long while since I've seen dad look half so mad," he said. "When he sets his face that way it's sure to mean trouble. Anyway, when I saw Tillicum I felt kind of boiling over—as well as sorry."

"Did you notice what Mr. Barclay said about the pistol?" Frank asked.

"Why, of course," said Harry thoughtfully. "Now I don't know what they've been after, but it's plain enough that there was some danger in the thing. Mr. Barclay doesn't seem extra smart, but there's something in his look that suggests he wouldn't be easy scared, and he took a pistol along." Then he laughed in a significant manner and jumped down into the trench. "It's my idea those dope fellows are going to be sorry before dad gets through with them, and now we'll go on with the draining."

He fell to with the grubhoe and for the next half hour worked furiously, after which Jake appeared and called them in to dinner.

CHAPTER IX
A PLAIN HINT

Mr. Oliver bought another horse from one of his scattered neighbors, and a few days afterward he and Jake set off for an inlet along the coast near which a few ranchers lived. Harry explained to Frank that as they clubbed together and bought their supplies from Seattle a little steamer from the latter place called at the inlet now and then to deliver the goods, and his father had ordered a mower which was to be sent down by her.

Mr. Oliver did not come back until late in the evening a couple of days later, but as soon as he arrived he and Jake set to work to put the machine together, and it was getting dusk when at last they left it standing beneath the trees near the edge of a ravine. Early on the following morning the boys went back with them to see if it would work satisfactorily in cutting a little green timothy, but as they crossed the clearing Jake, who was leading the team a little distance in front of his companions, stopped suddenly.

"You didn't go back and move that machine after we left it?" he asked.

"No," replied Mr. Oliver. "What made you think I did?"

Jake looked at his employer rather curiously. "Well," he said, "somebody must have moved it. The thing's gone."

Mr. Oliver broke into a run and the rest followed. When they reached the clump of trees they could discover no sign of the mower, except for the track of wheels among the withered needles and undergrowth. This led toward the ravine, at the bottom of which a little water flowed, and Frank saw Mr. Oliver's face harden as he followed this guide. A minute later they stood on the brink of the declivity and saw the mower lying upon its side among the stones thirty or forty feet below them. The slope was almost precipitous, but Mr. Oliver went down sliding amidst a rush of loosened soil, and Frank and Harry with some difficulty scrambled down after him. A glance was sufficient to show them that the implement was not likely to be of the least use to its owner. Mr. Oliver examined it quietly and then clambered back up the side of the ravine, after which he sat down and took out his pipe before he turned to Jake.

"Every bit of cast-iron in it is smashed," he said. "The pinion wheels are broken, and the other parts are bent. I'll have to order another one."

Jake made a gesture of sympathy.

"If I could get hold of the folks who did the thing it would be a consolation, but I haven't the least notion how to trail them."

"One man couldn't have moved it," said Mr. Oliver.

"There were three of them. The question is, what brought them here? I guess they didn't come just to smash the machine."

Mr. Oliver seemed lost a moment in contemplation.

"I think you're right," he said at length. "They probably came because this is the easiest way of getting through to the settlements in the Basker district and the beach behind the head makes a handy landing. We'll go along and look around. I don't think they'd try the cove. It's too near the house."

They turned into a bush trail together, and when they reached the beach a little while later Jake, stooping over a furrow in the smooth shingle by the water's edge, looked up at Mr. Oliver.

"A sea canoe grounded here soon after last high water," he said. "You can see where they ran her down when it had ebbed a little."

Mr. Oliver, who was still quietly smoking, nodded.

"Yes," he said, "it's very much as I expected. With a sheltered landing here and as good a trail inland as they could find, it's not difficult to understand why those fellows were anxious that I should stand in with them, or, at least, leave them alone. This thing, of course, was meant as a warning." Then he addressed the boys: "You needn't wait. You can get some more of those branches sawed off in the slashing."

They moved away and left him talking to Jake, and it was not until they had reached the bush that Harry made any observation.

"I've a notion that we're up against the meanest kind of toughs, but in the long run I'll back dad," he said. "It's quite likely that if we lie low you and I may get a hand in later on."

Frank made no answer, though the prospect his companion suggested was not unpleasant to him. Going back to their work they sawed up branches until nightfall. On the following afternoon they were still engaged at the same task at some distance from the house when they saw Jake, who had set out for a neighboring ranch in the morning, enter the clearing, dragging a big and evidently very unwilling animal after him. He sat down upon a log, and Harry dropped his ax.

"It's Webster's dog," he said to Frank. "I heard that somebody had given him one. We'll go along and look at him."

They found Jake rather breathless and very red in face, holding the end of a chain fastened to the collar of the dog, who crouched close by watching him with wicked eyes and white fangs bared. A serviceable club lay beside Jake, but it seemed to Frank that he had got as far away from the animal as the chain permitted. The lad was, however, not astonished at this, for he fancied he had never seen as intractable and generally unprepossessing a dog as this one.

"Dad's borrowed him from Webster?" Harry suggested.

"It seemed to me Webster was mighty glad to get rid of him and didn't want him back," said Jake. "Guess if he was mine I wouldn't be anxious to keep him either."

Frank moved a pace or two nearer the dog, holding out his hand, but speedily retired when it growled at him savagely. After that Jake turned to Harry.

"You're fond of dogs," he suggested. "Wouldn't you like to pat him?"

"No," said Harry, edging away. "I wouldn't try it for five dollars. What kind of a brute is he?"

"Well," said Jake, "I figure that fellow has a considerable mixture of ancestors, though there's a strain of the bull in him. That's where he got his stylish mouth from. He's about as amiable as a timber-wolf, and he has the gait of a bear, while it's my opinion there's more sense in a plow ox than there is in him."

"When did you leave Webster's?" Harry next inquired.

"Soon as dinner was over," responded Jake dryly.

"And supper will be ready soon. What in the name of wonder have you been doing?" Harry looked around at Frank. "It's about three miles."

Jake grinned. "Coming along—and resting. This fellow kind of decided he'd sit down every now and then, and I let him. He's a dog that's been accustomed to doing just what he wants."

"Did you have to cross the creek?" asked Frank, who noticed that the man's long boots and part of his trousers were wet.

"No," said Jake curtly. "The critter took a notion he'd like to go in, and as I couldn't let him loose, I had to go in, too. We splashed around in it for quite a few minutes."

Harry broke into a burst of laughter and Jake handed him the club. "I want to get in by supper. Suppose you put a move on him."

He stood up and jerked the chain, but the dog bared his teeth again and declined to stir. Harry, getting behind him, tapped him with the club, and he swung round savagely, straining at the chain.

"Now," said Jake, "I know how we'll fix him. You make him mad and then head for the ranch while he gets after you, and I'll try to hold him."

"No," said Harry decisively, "I don't think we'll try that way. Go on and lead him."

The animal moved off at last and shambled toward the house, looking bigger and considerably more clumsy than the largest bulldog Frank had ever seen. He walked into the kitchen docilely, but when Miss Oliver approached him Harry cried out in dismay.

"Keep away!" he warned. "He isn't safe."

"Loose the chain," said Miss Oliver, and to their vast astonishment the dog walked up to her, wagging his disreputable tail, and crouching down, licked her hands. She patted his great head gently and then turned smilingly to the boys.

"I'm afraid Webster has been rough with him," she said. "It's clear that he's a woman's dog."

"A woman's dog?" echoed Harry scathingly. "Well, the man who gave that beast to a woman must have been crazy."

During the next few days the dog made himself at home at the ranch, though with the exception of Miss Oliver he still eyed its inhabitants suspiciously. Jake said that though almost fully grown he was young and had no sense yet. Then the dog commenced to follow the boys about at a distance, and once fell upon and destroyed their overall jackets which they had taken off when they went to work. They found him sitting upon the tatters, evidently feeling proud of himself, for he wagged his tail and barked delightedly when they approached. As a rule, he did not make much noise, but his growl was deep and ominous, with something in it that discouraged any attempt at undue familiarity.

While they were ruefully inspecting their ruined garments Jake came up and leaned against a neighboring tree.

"He wants training, Harry," he observed. "If he was my dog, I'd break him in."

"The question," retorted Harry indignantly, "is how it's to be done. I'll own up that I know very little about training dogs, and that's not the kind of one I'd like to begin on." He turned to Frank. "Considering that a good many of the ranchers live almost alone, it's rather a curious thing that there are very few dogs in this part of the country."

Jake fixed his eyes dubiously upon the animal, who trotted up a little nearer and growled at him.

"Well," he said, "he's sure a daisy, but I guess he can be taught, and the first thing is to let him see you're not afraid of him."

Harry snickered. "Then suppose you try to prove it. Haul him up by the ear and teach him he's not to eat my jacket."

Jake judiciously disregarded this suggestion. "There's one trick most dogs learn quite easy. It's to guard. You put down some of your clothes, for instance, and make him see that nobody's to touch them until you come back. Then he'll sit tight until you do, and I guess in this fellow's case there'd be mighty little wrong with the nerves of the man who'd put a hand on them."

"If it's to be clothes they'll have to be somebody else's," said Harry. "Anyway, I'll mention it to my aunt. It's my opinion she's the only person who could teach him anything."

How Miss Oliver taught the dog they did not know, but she succeeded, for when the boys walked up to the house at supper time one evening a week or two later Harry, who reached the door first, came out hurriedly.

"The brute won't let me in," he explained. "I confess it sounds kind of silly, but perhaps you'd like to try."

Frank approached the door cautiously and stopped when he reached it. The dog crouched near the center of the kitchen floor, with a woman's straw hat in front of him from which there trailed a couple of chewed-up feathers. He looked up at Frank with a low, warning growl which said very plainly, "Come no farther!"

They called him endearing names, which, so far as they could see, had not the least effect, but neither of them felt equal to entering the kitchen until Miss Oliver walked in by another door. Then the dog let her take the hat, wagging his tail with satisfaction.

"He's a good deal more intelligent than you seem to think," she said. "Give him your hat, Harry, and then go out and wait for a few minutes before you come back for it."

Harry did so, and the dog made no trouble when he picked up the hat, but he would not let Frank go near it in the meanwhile. After that they tried two or three more experiments of the same kind, though Frank took no part in them, which was a thing he regretted when he went for a swim an evening or two later.

On this occasion the tide was almost full, the water in the cove was pleasantly warm and bright sunlight streamed down upon it, showing the white shingle a fathom beneath the surface. Now and then Frank went down toward it, for he had learned to swim under water and look about him while he did so, but by and by he headed for the entrance to the cove with the overhand side stroke which Harry had taught him. Swinging his left arm forward over his head, his face dipped under and then rose in the midst of a ripple as his hollowed palm swept backward under his crooked elbow to his thigh, while his legs swung across each other like a pair of scissors. The brine gleamed and sparkled as it slipped past him, and when he reached the entrance to the cove he slid up and down the smooth, green undulations with a pleasant lift and fall. It was so exhilarating that he went farther than he had intended, and he was feeling a little breathless when at last he turned back, but when he reached the spot where he had undressed trouble awaited him.

The dog was seated upon his clothing, watching him with suspicious eyes, and it growled when he stood up knee-deep. Frank hesitated. The dog did not look amiable, but he was beginning to feel cold, and he walked slowly forward a pace or two. Then the creature raised itself on its forepaws, with white fangs bare, and once more broke into a deep, ominous growl. There was no doubt that it intended to guard his clothes.

He threw a piece of shingle at it and was glad on the whole that he had not succeeded in hitting it when it stood up with bristling hair and a most determined look in its eyes. Frank floundered back into the water, wondering uneasily if it was coming in after him, and then standing still up to his waist considered what he should do. It was evident that he could not stay where he was much longer, and the dog showed no sign of going away. It was equally impossible for him to walk back to the ranch without his clothes, and in the meanwhile he was growing unpleasantly chilly. Then he noticed that although the shadow of the crags above rested upon the spot where he stood the sunshine fell upon a boulder which rose out of the water not far away. Swimming to it he crawled out and found it a little warmer there, but this brought him no nearer to finding a way out of the difficulty.

He did not remember how long he lay shivering upon the stone, but the shadow had crept across it and the tall firs above him showed up more blackly against the evening light, when at last Harry came clattering over the shingle and stopped in astonishment on seeing him.

"Whatever are you doing there?" he asked.

"Waiting until your dog goes home," said Frank. "He won't let me have my clothes. If you hadn't come I expect I'd have to stay here until to-morrow."

Harry couldn't help grinning when he observed the resolute animal. "Wouldn't it have been easier to come out and whack him off?"

"No," said Frank decidedly. "If you were in my place you wouldn't want to try."

Harry walked up to the creature and picked up the clothes, whereat it rose immediately and wagged its tail as though satisfied in having done its duty.

"He doesn't seem to mind me," Harry observed dryly. "Anyway, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out now unless, of course, you're happier where you are."

Frank swam across, dressed, and ran all the way to the ranch, but it was half an hour before he was moderately warm again. The next day he set about teaching the dog to guard. It occurred to him that it was not desirable that Harry and Miss Oliver should be the only ones to whom the animal would give any stray article of clothing he might come across.

A week or two later Miss Oliver went away on a visit to Tacoma, and Mr. Oliver, who had bought a new mower, commenced to cut his timothy hay. The machine could only work on the cleared land, and where the stumps were thick he set the boys to mow with the scythe. Frank found it troublesome work, for the big roots ran along the surface of the ground. The fern had grown up among these roots, and it was their task to cut and pick it out from the grass, while every few minutes the scythe point struck a root and sometimes stuck in it. In places it struck gravel, which made dents in it, and the blade often got entangled among shooting willows and young fir saplings. Frank decided that while it was evidently a costly and difficult thing to clear a ranch, it must be almost as hard for its owner to keep what he had won, since the forest persistently crept back again.

"Suppose you left this place alone for a couple of years?" he asked, stopping to whet his dinted scythe.

"You wouldn't know it again," Harry answered with a smile. "It would be a waste of willows, with young firs growing up between them. You couldn't tell it from the bush, only that the trees all round would be higher."

Frank dropped his scythe blade and leaned upon the haft. He had been mowing since sunrise, and the shadows were now rapidly lengthening. His back ached and his hands were sore, and he found it a relief to stand still a moment and look about him. On one side of the clearing the slanting sunrays struck deep into the forest, forcing up great columnar trunks out of the shadow. On the other, the fretted pinnacles of the firs cut sharp against the sky, and between stretched long swathes of fallen timothy and fern already turning yellow. Not far away, Mr. Oliver, sitting in the mower's saddle, was guiding his team along the edge of the grass which fell beneath the rasping knife, and the clink and rattle of the machine rang sharply through the still, evening air. Frank, stripped to blue shirt and trousers, found everything his eyes rested on pleasant, and he felt that, after all, he had done wisely when he left the cities.

Then he noticed Jake, who had been to the settlement, crossing the clearing with some letters in his hand. He gave them to Mr. Oliver, who pulled his team up and sat still for some minutes reading them. After that he stepped out and walked toward the boys.

"You might take the team along, Harry, and put the kettle on the stove," he said. "We'll have supper as soon as it's ready."

Harry moved away and Mr. Oliver leaned against a neighboring stump with his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Frank.

"I've a letter from your mother," he said. "She wants to know if I'm satisfied with you." He paused a moment and added with a smile: "That's a question I think I can answer in the affirmative."

"Thank you, sir," said Frank.

"Then," Mr. Oliver continued, "she goes into one or two other matters on which she seems to want my opinion. In the first place, somebody has offered to find you an opening in the office of a Philadelphia business firm. You'll have to decide about it, and it seems to me that the choice is rather a big one. You see, if you stay out here ranching two or three years it will probably spoil you for a business life in the eastern cities."

Frank thought hard for a minute or two. There was no doubt that ranching, when it included clearing land, as it generally seemed to do, was remarkably arduous work. In the case of a man with little money it evidently meant almost incessant toil, for it was only by persistent effort that one could chop and saw up the great trees and grub the stumps out. Still, he was growing fond of it, and, what was more, he was conscious that he was gaining a resolution and muscular vigor that in all probability he would never have acquired in the crowded cities.

Finally he looked up. "I don't think I would care to go back to them now," he said.

Mr. Oliver nodded gravely. "Your mother doesn't seem to think a great deal of this opening, but, on the other hand, you want to bear in mind that if you expect to make money in ranching you must be able to invest it. Raising cattle and fruit for sale is a trade, and a trader gets no more than a certain interest on his money and the wages which an equally capable managing clerk or foreman in the same profession would receive. There are few respectable businesses in which that interest is a very big one. As the result of this, the trader must be content with a little unless he has the money to earn him more."

"Yes," said Frank somewhat ruefully, "that's clear. I'm afraid I can hardly count on much."

"Your mother mentions that when you are three or four years older she might perhaps be able to raise you about two thousand dollars."

"I suppose that wouldn't go very far, sir?"

"It certainly wouldn't buy you a ranch anywhere near a city, but you might get land enough to make a small one back in the bush. If you bought such a place, you would probably have to go out and work at one of the sawmills or logging camps now and then. It would be several years before you could make much of a living, because it would cost you so much to bring your stock to market."

"Yes," said Frank. "I suppose that is why the land would be cheap?"

Mr. Oliver made a sign of assent. "It's a difficulty which is, however, usually got over in this country. You hold on and cultivate your land, and by and by the market comes to you. Somebody starts a sawmill or a pulp mill in the locality, or, if there's ore about, a smelter. New trails are cut, settlements spring up, and presently a branch railroad comes along, and the rancher can sell everything he can raise." He broke off for a moment, and smiled rather dryly. "In such a case you may get big prices, but if you average them out over the years of working and waiting, you'll find you have earned them, and that, after all, the stuff you sell is mighty cheap."

Then he handed Frank the letter. "I'd consider it carefully. The mail won't leave for the next three days, and now we'll go along to supper."

Harry had managed to prepare a meal, and when it was over Mr. Oliver turned to the boys.

"A friend of mine in Victoria has written asking me to look at a big piece of bush land he thinks of buying on the west coast of Vancouver Island. He offers to pay my expenses and a fee, and I've an idea that we might run across in the sloop if we get moderately fine weather after the hay is in. I wonder if you would like to go with me?"

There was no doubt that the prospect appealed to them and Mr. Oliver smiled his approval.

"Then," he said, "you had better hustle that hay in. We'll start as soon as we're through with it."

CHAPTER X
A BREEZE OF WIND

The hay was almost in when Frank and Harry stood one evening close under the apex of the roof in the log barn. The crop was heavy and because the barn was small it had been their business during the afternoon to spread and trample down the grass Jake flung up to them. They had been working at high pressure at one task or another since soon after daylight that morning, and now the confined space was very hot, though the sun was low. Its slanting rays smote the cedar shingles above their bent heads, and the dust that rose from the grass floated about them in a cloud and clung to their dripping faces. Frank felt that the veins on his forehead were swollen when they paused a moment for breath, leaning on their forks.

"I suppose we could get a couple more loads in, and there can't be more than that," said Harry dubiously. "I wouldn't mind a great deal if the next jumperful upset."

Frank devoutly wished it would, for he felt that he must get out into the open air, but a few moments later they heard the plodding oxen's feet and the groaning of the clumsy sled. The sounds ceased abruptly and Jake's voice reached them.

"Tramp it down good!" he called. "You've got to squeeze in this lot and another."

Frank choked down the answer which rose to his lips. But the hay must be got in, and the boys fell with their forks upon the first of the crackling grass Jake flung up to them. There seemed to be more dust in it than usual, and before the jumper was half unloaded they were panting heavily. When at last the oxen hauled the sled away they stood doubled up knee-deep in the hay with their backs close against the roof.

"I can't see how we're to make room for the last lot," Harry gasped. "Still, I guess it has to be done."

They set to work again, packing the hay into corners and stamping it down, and his occupation reminded Frank of what he had heard about mining in a thin seam of coal. It seemed hotter than ever, the dust was choking, and at every incautious move he bumped his head or shoulders against the beams. The last sled arrived before they were ready for it, and they crawled about half buried, dragging the grass here and there with their hands and ramming it with their feet and knees into any odd spaces left. At length the work was finished, and wriggling toward the opening in the wall, Harry caught at the edge of it and finding a foothold on a log beneath boldly leaped down. Frank was, however, less fortunate when he followed his companion, for some of the hay slipped away beneath him, and, without the least intention of leaving the barn in that undignified fashion, he suddenly shot out through the hole. He felt the air rush past him, and then, somewhat to his astonishment, found himself on the ground, none the worse except for the jar of the fall.

"If I'd tried to do that it's very likely I'd have broken my leg," he panted.

He sat down and threw off his hat. It was delightful to feel the breeze upon his dripping face and to be out in the fresh air again. He had been at work for fourteen hours, and was aching all over, but that did not trouble him. The hay was safely in, and there was some satisfaction in the feeling that he had done his part in a heavy piece of work. Looking about him he noticed that the shadow of the firs had crept half across the clearing, and that thin wisps of fleecy cloud were streaming by high above their tall black tops. Then he heard Harry speaking to his father.

"There's a smart southerly breeze, and the tide is running ebb," he was saying. "What's the matter with starting for Victoria right away?"

"Haven't you done enough for to-day?" Mr. Oliver asked with a smile.

"I don't feel as fresh as I did this morning," Harry admitted. "Anyway, when we've got a fair wind and three or four hours' ebb going with us, it would be a pity not to make the most of them."

Mr. Oliver looked doubtful. "I'm anxious to get away, because, as I've arranged to meet a man in Victoria, we'll have to take the steamer unless we can slip across very shortly. I've an idea that we may get more wind than we'll have any use for before sun-up. Still, we could run in behind the point at Bannington's, if it was necessary."

Then Jake broke in: "If you're going, I'll get supper and pack some bread and pork along to the sloop."

Mr. Oliver assented, and an hour later they paddled off to the sloop. The dog jumped into the canoe with them, and when they got on board he quietly sat down on the floorings while Jake helped the boys to hoist the mainsail. When they came to the jib Mr. Oliver stood up on the deck looking about him.

"I think we'd better have the smaller one," he advised.

They were ready at length, and Jake, who was to stay behind, called the dog as he was about to jump into the canoe. Harry was busy forward just then with the mooring chain in his hand and the loose jib thrashing about him, while the big mainboom jerked over Mr. Oliver's head as he sat at the helm. The dog, however, showed no signs of moving.

"Give him a shove," said Jake, addressing Frank. "When he gets up on deck, pitch him in."

Frank turned toward the dog, and then stopped abruptly when it showed its teeth and growled.

"It looks as if he meant to go along," Jake remarked with a grin. "Prod him with the boathook if he won't move."

Frank was dubious, as he imagined the dog might resent the prodding. At that moment Harry, who had been too busy to notice what was going on, hauled up the weather sheet of the jib.

"I'm clear," he called to his father. "I'll cant her head to lee when you're ready."

Mr. Oliver put the helm up as the bows swung around, and when the sloop slanted over Jake made a futile grab at the dog. Then shouting to Frank, he dropped into the canoe and clutched the rail as the sloop forged ahead, but the boy was busy with the mainsheet and did not look up. In another moment Jake let go. Almost immediately afterward the sloop came round, and when she stretched away toward the mouth of the cove the canoe dropped astern.

"Stand by your jibsheets," called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to come round again."

They were very busy during the next few minutes, for the cove was narrow and the wind was blowing in. When at length they swept out into the open water the dog crawled up to Harry and licked his hands. Harry looked at his father, who made a little sign of assent.

"I suppose he'll have to stay," he sighed. "When that dog decides on doing anything it's wise to let him do it. Now we'll square off the mainboom."

They let the sheet run until the big mainsail swung right out, and the sloop drove away, rolling viciously. Short, foam-flecked seas came tumbling after her, but as the tide was running the same way under them, lessening the resistance, very few broke angrily. Frank had learned enough by this time, however, to realize that it would probably be different when the stream turned. In the meanwhile the boat was sailing very fast, with a little ridge of frothing water washing by on either side when she lifted, and a thin shower of spray blowing all over her. Now and then the great sail with the heavy boom beneath it swung upward in an alarming fashion. Frank noticed that Mr. Oliver's eyes were gazing intently before him, and that his hands were clenched tightly upon the tiller.

"She seems rather bad to steer," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, without looking up. "You have to be careful when you're running before a fresh breeze. It's remarkably easy to bring the mainsail over with a bang if you let her fall off too much, and the result of that would probably be to tear the mast out of her. It's considerably worse when there's a big sea coming along behind."

Frank glanced astern. The sun had gone and the sky was strewn with ranks of hurrying clouds, while the sea was flecked with smears of white.

"Aren't you pressing her a little?" Harry asked. "She'd be easier on the helm if we lowered the peak or tied a reef in."

"I'd like to pick up the Hootalquin reef before it's dark," answered Mr. Oliver. "I'm not sure we'll get very much farther to-night. You wanted a sail, and I fancy you're going to be gratified."

During the next hour Frank had to admit that this remark was warranted. The breeze steadily freshened, and there was no doubt that the sea was rising. It frothed in a white hillock on either side of the boat, and little trails of foam swirled about her deck. Frank could see that she was overburdened by the sail she was carrying, but Mr. Oliver still sat with a set face at the tiller and showed no desire to leave his post. In the meanwhile it was getting dark. Forest and beach had faded to a faint, shadowy blur and there was only a steadily narrowing stretch of foaming water in front of them. Frank was very wet and the spray beat upon him continually. At length, when the light had almost gone, a dusky patch of something grew out of the gathering gloom ahead, and fancying it to be a rocky point, he felt considerably relieved, because there would be shelter behind it. A minute or two later Mr. Oliver called to the boys.

"Get forward and ease the peak down," he ordered. "Then back the jib. We'll tie two reefs in."

"Aren't we going in here?" Harry asked.

His father shook his head. "No, it's too dark. I could take her through in the daylight, but there are one or two rocks in the channel. We'll have to try for Bannington's."

Frank felt a twinge of disappointment. Bannington's was still a good way off, and it seemed to him that the gale was increasing every moment. He scrambled forward with Harry, however, and when they loosened the rope the tall peak of the sail swung down. Soon after they had done this Mr. Oliver put down his helm, causing the mainboom to jerk and thrash to and fro furiously, while as the boat came up head to wind a white sea struck her side and foamed on board her.

"Handy with the throat!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "I don't want to leave the helm."

They slacked another rope, making the gaff sink farther down, after which they tied up about a yard of the inner bottom corner of the sail to the foot of the mast. This was comparatively easy, but it was different when, standing in the water on the lee deck, they grabbed the tackle beneath the boom and endeavored to pull the leach, or outer edge, of the mainsail down. It would not come, and the heavy spar struck them as it jerked in board, flinging Frank off into the well.

"Get another pull on your topping lift," ordered Mr. Oliver.

They jumped forward to do it, but it proved no easy task, for they had to raise the outer end of the heavy boom. They were struggling with the tackle again when Mr. Oliver laid both hands on the rope.

"Now," he shouted, "heave, and bowse her down!"

They succeeded this time, and afterward hung out over the water while they knotted the reef-points beneath the spar. Then when they had trimmed the jib over Mr. Oliver put up his helm and the sloop drove on again into the darkness with shortened sail.

The boys sat down as far under the side deck as they could get, out of the worst of the spray, with the dog crouching in the water which washed about the floorings at their feet.

"Why didn't your father help us more than he did?" Frank asked presently.

"He couldn't leave the tiller for more than a moment or two," said Harry. "When Jake and I reefed her the day we took you off the steamer there wasn't as much wind. Of course, there are boats in which you can lash the helm, but that's not always possible. If dad had let go the tiller she'd have fallen off and started sailing, which would have dragged the tackle from our hands or pitched us in, and then she'd have come up again banging and shaking. He kept her heading so that the mainsail was lifting slack with no weight in it."

Frank was commencing to realize that the handling of a sailboat was rather a fine art. It is as much of a machine as a steamer, but it is also of the kind whose efficiency depends directly upon the human eye, hand and brain. Man has evolved a number of such instruments, and in the right hands they are far more wonderful than the others. Any one, for instance, can learn the pianola, but to extract fine music from a Cremona violin is a very different matter.

It blew steadily harder, and there was, as Frank noticed, a difference in the sea, for the flood stream was now setting up against them and was growing shorter and more turbulent. There was a smaller interval between the waves, which seemed to become steeper and less regular. They curled over and broke about the boat with a sound that reacted unpleasantly upon Frank's nerves, and he was thankful that he could, after all, see very little of them. The sloop's motion also changed. One moment she seemed to be moving almost slowly, and the next she swung up in a quick, savage rush, with her bows in the air and the white foam boiling high about her. Sometimes, too, there was a thud and a splash astern, and the decks were swept by a deluge of seething water.

In the meanwhile the boys had contrived to light a lamp in a little box which held a compass, and they laid it on the thwart before Mr. Oliver, though, as he explained in a word or two, it was particularly difficult to steer an exact course in a sea of that kind. It was on the boat's quarter, that is, she was traveling with the wind almost behind her at a long slant across the course of the waves, but each time an extra big wave foamed up astern Mr. Oliver let her fall off and run right down wind with it to prevent its breaking on board.

Frank wondered how he did it, for the seas were following them and it was quite dark, but Mr. Oliver had no need to look around. He had for guides the sound of the oncoming seas, the pull of the tiller, and the motion of the boat, and, besides, from long experience his brain worked sub-consciously. He did not pause to consider when the bows climbed out and the stern sank down in a rush of foam, and had he done so, in all probability he would have brought the big mainboom smashing over. To run a fore-and-aft rigged craft, and a sloop in particular, before a badly breaking sea, is a difficult and somewhat perilous thing, and the ability to do it comes only from long acquaintance with the water, and, perhaps, from something in the helmsman's nature.

The boat sped on furiously, though they presently lowered the peak down to reduce the sail further, and by degrees Frank became conscious of an unpleasant nervous tension that seemed to sap away his hardihood. There was nothing to do in the meanwhile, but he felt that if he were called upon for any difficult or hazardous service he would find himself incapable of it. He was drenched and shivering, and he did not want to move. He only wished to cower beside Harry under the partial shelter of the coaming. This was, however, a feeling that other folks occasionally experience who go to sea in small vessels, which they have to grapple with and overcome. It is when there is no particular call on him, and he can only stand by and watch, that terror gets its strongest hold on the heart of a man.

At length Mr. Oliver called to the boys. "We must be close abreast of Bannington's," he said. "The end of the point should be to leeward. Get forward, Harry, where you can see out beneath the jib."

Frank followed his companion as he crawled up on the little deck. He did not want to seem afraid, but he held on tight with one hand when they knelt in the water that splashed about them. He could see the frothy seas beneath the black curve of the jib, but for what seemed a very long while there was nothing else. Then Harry suddenly raised his voice.

"Point's right ahead!" he sang out, and the next moment jumped to his feet. "There's a black patch a little to weather."

"Up peak for your lives!" cried Mr. Oliver.

He left the helm with a bound, and all three struggled desperately with a rope, while as the bagged mainsail extended and straightened out a sea broke on board the boat. Then they floundered aft and dragged in the mainsheet with all their might, after which Mr. Oliver jumped for the helm again, while the boys flattened in the jib.

"We're the wrong side of the point," gasped Harry. "I'm not sure she'll beat round it."

There was no difficulty in imagining what was likely to happen if she failed to do so, and Frank, who did not think she would last long if she washed up among the boulders before the sea that was running, clung to the coaming in a state of tense suspense. What seemed to be a continuous sheet of spray whirled about him, the boat slanted over at an alarming angle with half her lee deck in the sea, and the tops of the confused breaking waves through which she plunged washed all over her. This was sailing with a vengeance, and a very different thing from lounging at the tiller while she swung smoothly across the water before a fair wind. She was now thrashing to windward for her life, with the full weight of the sea on her weather bow and a foam-swept reef lying in wait close to lee of her, and whether she would claw off it or not depended largely upon her helmsman's skill.

Frank could see him dimly, a black shape gripping the tiller, and he was unpleasantly aware of the fact that there would speedily be an end of them all if he lost his nerve for a moment or made a blunder. It happens now and then at sea that the safety of crew and vessel hangs upon the brute strength of human muscle and the simple valor which enables a man to do what is required of him on the moment without flinching; empty assurance and a consequential air are of uncommonly little service then. Such occasions are a very grim test of manhood, and, as a rule, it is not the loud talker who best stands that strain.

Frank admitted afterward that he was badly scared, which was not in the least unnatural. It was more important that he should nevertheless realize that it was his business to trim the jib over when this was necessary. His companion, who was gazing to leeward, presently raised his voice.

"Broken water close ahead," he announced.

"Stand by your jib!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "We must try to heave her around."

Frank let the lee sheet run, groping deep in the water for it as Mr. Oliver put down the helm, and with a frantic thrashing of canvas the sloop came up into the wind. There was a moment of suspense during which she seemed to stop, and the boy felt his heart thumping furiously. He knew that if she fell off again on the previous tack nothing could save her from going ashore. Suddenly he heard Harry call to him.

"Haul it up!" he shouted. "We have to box her off."

Frank hauled with all his might, and the thrashing of the head sail ceased. It caught the wind, and a sea fell upon the boat as the bows swung around. Then they jumped to the opposite side of her and struggled desperately to haul the lee sheet in as she forged ahead again, after which there was nothing to do but wait and wonder if she was driving in toward the shore or working out toward open water. They stood on for half an hour, seeing nothing, and then came round half-swamped, only to stagger away on the opposite tack, running once more into horribly broken water. As they did so Harry shouted that there were boulders, the end of the point, he fancied, close to lee.

"She won't come about in the rabble," said Mr. Oliver.

It was evident that they must now either scrape around the point on that tack or go ashore, and Frank felt his nerves tingle as he gazed into the spray. He fancied that there was something black and solid beyond it, but could distinguish nothing further. Then the blackness faded, the sea seemed to become a little more regular, and Harry cried out hoarsely, "We're round!"

"Down peak!" called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to jibe her."

Frank had learned that to jibe a boat is to turn her around stern to wind, instead of head-on, which is the usual way, and scrambling forward with Harry he helped lower the peak. After that they again floundered aft, leaving the mainsail reduced in size, and grabbed the sheet as Mr. Oliver put up his helm. The bows swung around as the boat went up with a sea, and the big boom tilted high up into the darkness above the boys. They struggled savagely with the sheet, which slightly restrained it, until the boat rolled suddenly down upon her side as the sail jerked over and the rope was torn swiftly through their hands. There was a crash and a bang, and Frank was conscious that the water was pouring over the coaming. He clung to the sheet, however, and while Mr. Oliver helped them with one hand they got a little of it in, after which the sloop, rising somewhat, drove forward. A few minutes later the sea suddenly became smoother, the wind seemed cut off, and Frank made out a black mass of rock rising close above them. They ran on beneath it until Mr. Oliver, rounding the boat up, bade them pitch the anchor over.

CHAPTER XI
MR. BARCLAY JOINS THE PARTY

When the boat brought up to her anchor the boys spent some time straightening up her gear and pumping her out. The work put a little warmth into them, but they were glad to crawl into the cabin when it was done. There was scarcely room in it to sit upright, and with the moisture standing beaded everywhere it looked rather like the inside of a well. Mr. Oliver had lighted the stove and a lamp was burning. By and by he took off a hissing kettle, and when they had made a meal they lay down in their wet clothes amidst a raffle of more or less dripping ropes and sails. Fortunately, the place was warm, and Frank was thankful to stretch himself out along the side of the boat. He was discovering that mental strain of the kind he had undergone during the last few hours is as fatiguing as bodily labor.

But he did not immediately go to sleep. The craft rocked upon the long swell which worked in round the point, with now and then a sharp rattle as she plucked hard at her cable. Sometimes she swung suddenly around upon it as an eddying blast swept down from the rocks above, and the drumming of the halliards against the mast broke continuously through the moan of the wind among the trees ashore and the deeper rumble of the ground sea. At last, however, he fell into a heavy slumber, and it was daylight and Harry had put the spider on the stove when he awoke again. He made his breakfast before he went out on deck, to find that the wind had dropped a little and it was raining hard. The dim, slate-green water lapped noisily upon the wall of rock close by, and glancing seaward he saw nothing but a leaden haze and a short stretch of tumbling combers. Mr. Oliver had gone out earlier and was standing on the deck looking about him.

"There's no great weight in the wind, though the sea's still rather high," he said presently. "I think we can push on for Victoria."

Frank, who fancied they would not get there before that night, was by no means so keen about the sail as he had been on the previous day. He felt that it would be considerably pleasanter to remain in the shelter of the point until the sun came out or the wind went down, and it seemed to him that Harry shared his opinion. The dog also looked very draggled and miserable and had evidently had enough of the voyage. They, however, set the mainsail, leaving the reefs in, hauled up the anchor, and hoisted the jib as the sloop stretched out across the waste of tumbling water, after which the boys went below to straighten up the breakfast things. Frank once or twice felt a little sick as he did so, and he noticed that Harry wore a somewhat anxious look.

"It's not blowing as hard as it was when we ran in, but I don't think dad would have gone unless he'd some particular reason," Harry said at length. "I wonder who the man is he expects to meet in Victoria, because I'm inclined to believe it's not the one who wants him to look at the land. The worst of dad is that he keeps such a lot to himself."

They crawled out again shortly afterward and found the seas getting longer and bigger. Once or twice a blur of something went by that might have been the end of an island, and Mr. Oliver changed his course a little, but after that the dim, green water stretched away before them empty and only broken by smears of snowy froth, and the sloop drove on before the combers which came up out of the haze astern of her in long succession.

It was toward noon, and Mr. Oliver had gone into the cabin to get dinner ready, leaving Harry at the helm, when, glancing around, Frank saw an indistinct mass of something break out of the mist. It grew into the shadowy shape of a steamer while he watched it.

"There's a big vessel close by," he said, touching his companion's arm.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. "Sure," he nodded. "What's more, she's coming right along our track. Get in some mainsheet while I luff her."

He changed the sloop's course a trifle, but in the meanwhile the steamer was growing in size and distinctness with a marvelous rapidity. Her great bow seemed to be rising out of the water like a headland, over which Frank could just see the tiers of white deckhouses, one mast, and the tall smokestack. Then he glanced forward at the sloop's wet deck and the low strip of her double-reefed mainsail, looking very small among the tumbling seas, and it occurred to him that it would probably be difficult for the steamer's lookout to see them. He felt rather anxious when he glanced back astern.

"She still seems to be coming right down on us," he said.

Harry called his father, who hurried out and glanced at the vessel.

"Shall we get up and yell?" the boy asked.

"No," said Mr. Oliver curtly, "they couldn't hear you to windward. Let her come up farther."

Frank helped drag some more mainsheet and then looked around again with a very unpleasant thrill of apprehension. The black bow seemed almost above them, and the sea leaped against a wall of plates as the great mass of iron swung slowly out of it and sank down again. Then from somewhere beside the smokestack a streak of white steam blew out and a great reverberatory roar came hurtling about them. Mr. Oliver's anxious face relaxed.

"They've seen us," he said. "Her helm's going over."

The bow drew out and lengthened into an increasing strip of side. Another mast became visible, with a double row of white deckhouses and a tier of boats between. Here and there a cluster of diminutive figures showed up among them, and then the great ship sped by with the whole of her size revealed. The sloop plunged madly on her screw-torn wake, but in another minute or two she had drawn away and was melting into the haze again.

"A big boat," said Mr. Oliver. "She was very close to us. You had better keep your eyes open while I get dinner."

The rest of the dismal day passed uneventfully, but toward evening the haze commenced to roll aside and they saw blurred black pines looming up ahead of them. A little later they ran into Victoria harbor, and, hiring a Siwash to take them ashore, walked through the streets of what struck Frank as a very handsome city until they reached a hotel. Here they ordered supper, and after the meal was over the boys, who had changed their clothes, sat with Mr. Oliver in the almost deserted smoking room. He seemed to be expecting somebody, which somewhat astonished Frank, but he noticed that Harry smiled meaningly when Mr. Barclay walked in. He was dressed in light-colored sporting garments, with a belt around his waist and a leather patch on one shoulder, and there were gaudy trout flies stuck in his little cloth cap. He threw the cap on the table before he shook hands with Mr. Oliver and the boys, smiling as he caught Harry's eye.

"Well," he asked, indicating the flies, "what do you think of them?"

Harry grinned again as he laid his finger on one.

"You're not going to get many trout with that fellow, unless they've different habits in British Columbia. They won't come on for quite a while."

Mr. Barclay removed the fly and put it into a wallet.

"Thanks," he said. "It's some time since I did any fishing." Then he seemed to notice the manner in which the boy was surveying his clothing. "It's a sport's get-up, but are you acquainted with any reason why a United States citizen shouldn't get a little innocent amusement catching Canadian trout?"

"No, sir," answered Harry coolly. "Still, there are quite a few trout in the rivers on the American side of the boundary. It makes one wonder if you had anything else in view besides fishing in coming to British Columbia."

Mr. Barclay regarded him with an air of ironical reproof.

"In a general way, young man, it's most unwise to blurt the thing right out when you have a suspicion in your mind. It's better to let it stay there until you have good cause to act on it." He turned to Mr. Oliver. "I'm inclined to doubt the advisability of leaving your sloop lying where she is in full view of the wharf."

"Then you recognized her?"

"At a glance. The trouble is that there are one or two acquaintances of yours who might do the same."

Mr. Oliver looked thoughtful.

"I've been considering that, but it was getting dark when we ran in, and we had better move the first thing to-morrow. Now with this unsettled weather I'm not very keen on sailing up the west coast, which is open to the Pacific, and the place we are bound for is rather a long way."

"Then go east," advised Mr. Barclay. "There are a number of inlets on that side of the island within easy reach of the railroad, and you ought to reach the nearest of them in a few hours. I'll go on with the cars to-morrow, and if you don't get in at one of the way stations, I'll wait for you at Wellington. Then we could cross to the west coast by the Alberni stage and hire a couple of Indians and a sea canoe. It wouldn't be a long run from there."

Mr. Oliver agreed to this, and getting up early next morning, they slipped out of the harbor, and some hours afterward crept into a forest-girt inlet, where they left the sloop. There was a depot nearby, and getting on board the cars when the next train came in, they found Mr. Barclay awaiting them. Early in the afternoon they alighted at a little wooden, colliery town, and next day they crossed the island in the stage over a very rough trail which led through tremendous forests. Once they passed a wonderful blue lake lying deep-sunk between steep walls of hills. Then they crossed a divide and came winding down into a valley with water flashing at the foot of it. It was evening when they arrived at a straggling settlement on the banks of a riband of salt water twisting away among the forest-shrouded hills, and found several Indians there who had come up in their sea canoes.

Mr. Oliver hired a couple of them, and they started after they had purchased a few stores. A light, pine-scented breeze was blowing down the valley when they thrust the canoe off from the shingle. They had no sooner done so, however, when the dog arose with a deep growl which indicated that he objected to the Indians going with them. As his actions did not seem to have the desired effect he seized the nearest Indian by the leg, and it was only when Harry belabored him with a paddle that he could be induced to let go. Then he barked at them savagely until Frank drew him down upon his knee with a hand about his neck, while the Siwash raised two little masts. In the meanwhile the boy watched the men with interest, and decided that they had very little in common with the prairie Indians he had seen in pictures and from the cars.

They were dressed neatly in clothes which had evidently been purchased at a store, and though their faces were brown and their hair rather coarse and dark there was nothing else unusual about them. They talked with Mr. Oliver and Mr. Barclay freely in what Harry said was Chinook, a readily learned lingua-franca in use on parts of the Pacific Slope. Then Frank fixed his attention upon the canoe, a long, narrow, and beautifully shaped craft with the usual tall, bird's-head bow. She was rather shallow, but Harry said that this made her paddle fast. He added that though these canoes would sail reasonably well when the breeze was fair the Indians usually drove them to windward with the paddle unless the sea was too heavy, in which case they generally made for the beach and pulled the craft out.

Frank remembered that this, or something like it, was the ancient practice, and that it was only by slow degrees that man had discovered he could still make the wind propel his vessel to its destination when it blew from ahead. Greek and Roman triremes, Alexandrian wheat ships, and Viking galleys, had made wonderful voyages, and they all carried sail, but they set it only when the wind was fair. When it drew ahead they stowed their canvas and thrashed the lean hull through the seas with their long oars. Now, after perfecting his vessel's under-water body, inventing the center board, and learning how to make flat-setting sails, man was going back to the old-time plan, only that instead of relying upon the muscle of close-packed rowers he used improved propellers, tri-compound reciprocators and turbines.

One of the Siwash shook out the two spritsails which sat on a pole stretching up to the peak from the foot of the mast, and when he had led the sheets aft his companion knelt astern with a paddle held over the gunwale. Slanting gently down to the faint breeze, the craft slid away through the smooth, green water with a long ripple running back behind her. The log houses dropped astern and were lost among the trees, a valley filled with somber forest, and a rampart of tall hillside, slipped by, and as they crept on from point to point the strip of still water stretched away before them between somber ranks of climbing trees.

Frank had no idea how far they had gone when the light began to fail, though he fancied that the shallow craft, now slipping forward so smoothly, was sailing a good deal faster than she seemed to be. At length one of the Siwash loosened the sheets and stowed the sails, while his companion turned the bows toward the beach. She slid in and grounded gently on a bank of shingle in a little cove, where a gigantic forest crept down to the water. They got out and ran her up, filled their kettle at a tinkling creek, hewed resinous chips from a fallen fir, and built a fire. Then they cut armfuls of thin spruce branches with which to make their beds, and presently sat down to an ample supper.

When it was over the Indians went down to the canoe, and Mr. Oliver and Mr. Barclay drew a little apart from the boys. Frank, lying near Harry beneath a big cedar, raised himself up on one elbow and watched the firelight flicker upon the mighty trunks. On the one hand they were lost in the gloom of the dense mass of dusky foliage, but on the other their great branches cut against the sky, which was still softly blue, and a blaze of silver radiance stretched across the water, for a half-moon had just sailed up above the opposite hill. Out of the silence there stole a faint whispering from the tops of the taller trees and the languid lapping of water among the stones, but there was no other sound, and once more Frank was glad that he had not exchanged the stillness of the wilderness for the turmoil of the cities. He had now definitely decided to become a rancher.

It grew colder by and by, and wrapping his blanket around him, he wriggled down closer among the yielding spruce twigs. The great trunks grew dimmer and the smoke wisps which drifted among them became less distinct. By degrees they all grew mixed together—a confusion of sliding vapor and spectral trees—and he was conscious of nothing more.

CHAPTER XII
THE STRANGER

A couple of days later the party pitched their camp in the depths of a lonely valley sloping to the Pacific, which was not far away. It was filled with great redwoods, balsams and cedars, and as Frank gazed at the endless rows of towering trunks it struck him as curious that Mr. Oliver's friend should think of buying this tract of giant forest for ranching land. He said so to Harry, who laughed.

"There's no rock or gravel on it and that counts for a good deal," said his companion. "If the soil looks as if it would grow things, it's about all the average man expects on this side of the Rockies. A few trees more or less don't matter. It's the same with us right down the Pacific Slope; the only difference is that on this island the firs seem just a little bigger." He appeared to admit the latter fact reluctantly, adding, "I guess that's because it's wetter in Canada."

They were standing outside a little tent of the kind most often used in the Western bush. It was supported by a ridge pole resting at either end upon two more, which were spread well apart at the bottom and crossed near the top. A short branch stay stretched back from each pair, and a few turns of cord lashing held the whole frame together. They had cut the poles in five minutes in the bush, and had brought the light cotton cover with them rolled up in a bundle. A good many men in that country live in such shelters during most of the year. Mr. Barclay sat on one of the hearth logs which were rolled close together in front of the tent and Mr. Oliver stood in the entrance.

"But the place must be such a tremendous way from a market," said Frank in response to Harry's last remark.

Mr. Oliver smiled. "It's not long since I tried to explain that a good many of the bush ranchers have to wait until the market comes to them. They stake their dollars and a number of years of hard work on the future of the country."

"Some of them get badly left now and then," said Mr. Barclay dryly. "You'll find laid-out townsites that have never grown up all along the Pacific Slope. There are stores and hotels falling to pieces in one or two I've struck." Then changing the subject: "Are you boys coming across with me to the river for some fishing to-morrow?"

They said that they would be glad to do so, and Mr. Barclay turned to Mr. Oliver. "We'll give you another two days to finish your surveying, and then we'll meet you at the rancherie on the inlet we spoke of. We can camp in the bush outside the tent for a couple of nights."

They started early the next morning, taking one Indian with them to pack their provisions, and the dog, who insisted on accompanying them. They were plodding along a hillside toward noon when Mr. Barclay, who was walking in front with their guide, looked back at the boys.

"Get hold of the dog as soon as we stop and keep him quiet," he cautioned.

After that they moved forward in silence for some minutes while the trees grew thinner ahead of them, until Mr. Barclay stopped behind a brake of undergrowth. The dog broke into a short, throaty bark and then growled hoarsely until Frank knelt beside him and laid a hand upon his collar. When he had quieted the animal, who by degrees had become attached to him, he arose and found he could look down upon a narrow slit of valley into which the sunlight poured. A creek swirled through the bottom of it, and he was astonished to see a swarm of blue-clad figures toiling with grubhoe and shovel upon its banks, and a cluster of bark shelters in the widest part of the hollow.

"Chinamen!" he said. "What can they be doing? One never would have expected to find a colony of them here."

Mr. Barclay smiled in a somewhat curious fashion.

"They're washing gold. It's a remarkably simple process, if you're willing to work hard enough. You shovel out the soil and sand and keep on washing it until it's all washed away. Any gold there is remains in the bottom of the pan."

"But if there's gold in that creek, how is it there are no white men about?"

"Probably because they couldn't make wages. There's a little gold in a number of the creeks right down the Slope, but where the quantity's very small nobody but a Chinaman finds it worth while to look for it."

Mr. Barclay sat down and spent some minutes apparently carefully watching the blue-clad figures toiling in the sunlight below, after which he got up and signaled for them to go on again. The boys, however, dropped a little behind, and presently Harry gave his companion a nudge.

"I guess you noticed that when you said one wouldn't have expected to find those Chinamen here Barclay didn't answer it?"

"Yes," said Frank thoughtfully. "I suppose you mean he wasn't astonished when he saw them?"

"You've hit it, first time," Harry assented. "That man's on the trail, and though I can't tell you exactly who he's getting after, I've my ideas." He paused with a chuckle. "I'm not sure now he's quite so much of a stuffed image as he seemed to be."

Frank said nothing in answer to this. A few minutes later Harry touched his arm as Mr. Barclay, turning suddenly, shouted:

"Get hold of the dog!"

Frank grabbed at the animal's collar but missed it, and the next moment the dog had vanished. Then there was a crash in the bush, and a beautiful slender creature with long legs and little horns shot out from behind a thicket and flung itself high into the air. It fell again, this time with scarcely a sound, into a clump of fern, rose out of it, and in a wonderful bound cleared a fallen trunk with broken branches projecting from it. Then it was lost in another thicket and the dog's harsh barking rang through the silence of the woods. Once or twice again Frank caught a momentary glimpse of a marvelously agile creature rising and falling among the undergrowth, and then there was only the yelping of the dog which became fainter and fainter and finally broke out at irregular intervals. Mr. Barclay sat down upon the fallen trees.

"I suppose we'll have to wait until that amiable pet of yours comes back," he said. "On the whole it's fortunate the deer broke out now instead of a quarter of an hour earlier."

They waited a considerable time before the dog crept up to them wagging his ragged tail in a disappointed manner. Harry shook his fishing rod at him threateningly.

"I'd lay into you good, only it wouldn't be any use," he said. "The more you're whacked, the worse you get."

The dog wagged his tail again and jumped upon Frank, who patted him before they resumed the march.

"It's rather curious, but that's the first deer I've seen since I've been in the country," he said. "Do they always jump like that?"

"Well," said Harry, "in a general way they are quite hard to see, and you can walk right past one without noticing it when it's standing still. Their colors match the trunks and the fern, and, what's more important, it's not often you can see the whole of them. In fact, I've struck as many deer by accident as I've done when I've been trailing them. Now and then you almost walk right up to one, though I haven't the least notion how it is they don't hear you, because as a rule the one you're trailing will leave you out of sight in a few moments if you snap a twig. Anyway, a scared deer goes over whatever lies in front of him. There are very few things he can't jump, and he comes down almost without a sound."

The rest of the journey proved uneventful, and early in the evening they made camp on the banks of a frothing river which swept out of the shadow crystal clear. In this it differed, as Harry explained, from most of the larger ones on the Pacific Slope, which are usually fed by melted snow and stained a faint green. Mr. Barclay, whose boots and clothes were already considerably the worse for wear, sat down beside a swirling pool and took out his pipe.

"There's no use pitching a fly across it yet, I suppose," he said. "We may as well get supper before we start."

The Siwash prepared the meal and remained behind with Mr. Barclay when it was over, while the two boys went down stream with a rod he had lent them which Harry insisted Frank should take. There were, he urged, plenty of trout in the river near his father's ranch, though it was very seldom he had leisure to go after them. They wandered on some distance beside the water, which ran almost west toward the Pacific, and wherever the forest was a little thinner the slanting sunrays streaming between the serried trunks smote along it. Frank, who had, as it happened, once or twice got a week or two's fishing in the East, kept his eyes open, but it was only twice that he fancied he noticed the faint dimple made by a short-rising trout.

"I'd have expected to find a river of this kind thick with fish," he said.

"There's sure to be a good many in it," answered Harry. "You wait about another half hour."

"What's the matter with starting now?" urged Frank. "Isn't that one rising in the slack yonder?"

"See if you can get him," said Harry, smiling.

Frank swung the rod, straining every effort to make a neat, clean cast, and he succeeded. The flies dropped lightly about a foot above the dimple made by the fish, and swept down stream across the spot where he had reason to suppose it was waiting. There was no response, however, and nothing broke the rippling surface when the flies floated down a second time. Frank laid down the rod.

"It's curious," he murmured.

Harry laughed. "Hold on a little. You've seen three fish rising now, and that's quite out of the common."

Frank sat down again, and waited until the sunlight faded off the river and the firs about it suddenly grew blacker. Soon afterward what seemed an almost solid cloud of tiny insects drifted along the surface of the water, which was immediately broken by multitudinous splashes.

"Now you can begin," said Harry.

Frank, clambering to a ledge of rock, swung his rod, and as the flies swept across an eddy there was a splash and a swirl and a sudden tightening of the line. He got the butt down as the winch commenced to clink, and Harry waded out into the stream lower down, holding his wide hat.

"Let him run, but keep a strain on," he cried. "You've got a big one."

The fish fought for three or four minutes, gleaming, a streak of silver, through the shadowy flood, as it showed its side, then sprang clear and changed again to a half-seen dusky shape that drove violently here and there. Then it came up toward the bending point of the rod, and at length Harry, slipping his hat beneath it, lifted it out.

"Nearly three quarters of a pound," he said. "Your trace is clear now. Try again, and never mind about the slack and eddies. Pitch your flies anywhere."

Frank did so, and they had scarcely fallen when there was a second rush, but this fish seemed smaller and he dragged it out unceremoniously upon the shingle. It was the same the next cast, and for a while he was kept desperately busy. When at length he laid the rod down Harry announced that they had a dozen fish.

"We'll try the next pool now," he added. "Some of these trout aren't half a pound and I'd like you to get a real big one."

The next pool proved to be some distance away and there was nothing but rock and foaming water between, but when they reached a slacker place where the current circled around a deep basin Frank had four or five more minutes' fishing, during which he landed several trout. Then the flies seemed to vanish and there was scarcely a splash on the shadowy water.

"You may as well put the rod up," Harry advised. "It's a sure thing you won't get another."

Frank tried for a few minutes, but finding his companion's prediction justified, sat down near him among the roots of a big fir. At the foot of the pool where he had been fishing the stream swept furiously between big scattered boulders in a wild white rapid. It was narrower there, and a ledge of rock, slightly hollowed out underneath, rose above it on the side on which they sat a little more than a hundred yards away. The woods were now darkening fast, and the chill of the dew was in the air, which was heavy with the scent of redwood and cedar. In places the water still glimmered faintly, and except for the roar it made, everything was very still.

Suddenly Harry pointed to the dog, who was lying near Frank.

"Get hold of him," he said in a low voice. "If nothing else will keep him quiet, we'll roll your jacket round his head."

Frank, who had taken off his jacket, which was badly torn, when he began fishing, laid his hand on the dog as it arose with a low growl. Then as it tried to break away from him he seized its collar and held on with all his might while Harry flung the jacket over it. Though the thing cost them an effort they managed to hold the animal still between them. In the meanwhile there was a crackle of undergrowth and Frank saw a man who walked in a rather curious manner move out from the shadow. Even when he was clear of the overhanging branches it was impossible to see him distinctly, but Frank recognized him with a start. There was something wrong with one of the dark figure's shoulders.

The man moved on away from them, until he stopped at the edge of the overhanging rock, where he stood for a moment or two. Then he leaped out suddenly and alighted on the top of a boulder about which the white froth whirled. Frank fancied that only a very powerful person could have safely made such a leap, and there was no doubt that whatever it was that had caused the man's unusual gait, it had not affected his agility. The next moment, he jumped again, and, coming down rather more than knee-deep in the rapid, floundered through it and vanished into the shadow beneath the trees. Then Harry looked around at his companion with a smile.

"I'll own up that Barclay's smart, after all," he said. "He's sure on the trail. Anyway, perhaps we'd better head back to camp in case some more of them come along."

It was quite dark when they reached the fire the Siwash had made and found Mr. Barclay, who now seemed rather wet as well as ragged, sitting beside it with his pipe in his hand. When they had compared their fish with those he had killed they lay down among the withered needles on the opposite side of the fire.

"It's good fishing, sir, but you must be very keen to come so far for it," said Harry, looking up innocently at Mr. Barclay.

The red light of the fire was on Mr. Barclay's face and Frank saw that he glanced thoughtfully at Harry.

"It certainly is," he answered. "I believe you have already said something very much like your last remark. Still, you see, I don't propose to come often."

Frank suppressed a chuckle. If Harry had intended to surprise the man into some admission he had not succeeded yet.

"And we go on to the rancherie in a couple of days," Harry added. "From what the Indians told me I don't think we'd get any fishing there. Wouldn't it be better to stay here a little longer?"

"No," said Mr. Barclay, "quite apart from the difficulty of sending your father word, what you suggest doesn't strike me as advisable, for one or two reasons."

Harry seemed to realize that he was making no progress, and, looking meaningly at Frank, suddenly changed his tactics.

"There's something I should perhaps have told you, sir, though I don't know whether it will interest you. Anyway, not long ago Frank and I were up at the Chinese colony behind the settlement near our ranch. Perhaps you have been there?"

"I've heard of it," said Barclay dryly.

Then in a few words Harry described how the man they had endeavored to trail had vanished at the Chinaman's shack, and Frank saw a look of eager interest cross Mr. Barclay's usually stolid face.

"You suggest that the fellow didn't want you to see him?" he asked.

"That was certainly how it struck me."

"And he walked rather curiously and one shoulder seemed a little higher than the other? I think you mentioned that?"

"I did," repeated Harry.

Mr. Barclay seemed to reflect, but there was now sign of deeper interest in his expression.

"Did you notice whether he had red hair and gray eyes?"

"No," said Harry with a grin, "though I can't be sure about it, I've a notion that his hair was dark. As it happened, I only saw his back, but I'd know the man again." He paused impressively. "In fact, I hadn't the least trouble about it when I saw him half an hour ago."

Mr. Barclay started and there was no doubt that he was astonished at this.

"You ran up against him here!"

"No," said Harry, "I only watched him from behind a fir. He crossed the creek heading south and didn't notice us."

Mr. Barclay settled back again and seemed lost in thought. "After all," he said shortly, "it's possible."

Then he changed the subject and they talked about fishing until the fire died down, when they spread their blankets upon their couches of soft spruce twigs.

CHAPTER XIII
THE SCHOONER REAPPEARS

It was early in the evening when after a toilsome march Mr. Barclay and the boys reached a Siwash rancherie built just above high-water mark on the pebbly beach of a sheltered inlet. Frank had already discovered that the northern part of the Pacific Slope is a land of majestic beauty, but he had so far seen nothing quite so wild and rugged as the surroundings of the Indian dwelling. Behind it, a great rock fell almost sheer, leaving only room for a breadth of shingle between its feet and the strip of clear green water. On the opposite side mighty firs climbed the face of a towering hill so steep that Frank wondered how they clung to it, and at the head of the tremendous chasm a crystal stream came splashing out of eternal shadow. Seaward a wet reef guarded the inlet's mouth, with its outer edge hidden by spouts of snowy foam, upon which the big Pacific rollers broke continually, ranging up in tall green walls and crumbling upon the stony barrier with a deep vibratory roar which rang in long pulsations across the stately pines.

The rancherie was a long and rather ramshackle, single-storied, wooden building not unlike a frame barn, only lower, and Frank discovered that although it was inhabited by the whole Siwash colony there were no divisions in it, but each inmate or family claimed its allotted space upon the floor. A tall pole rudely carved with grotesque figures stood in front of it, and it occurred to Frank as he inspected them that he was face to face with the rudiments of heraldry. The nobles of ancient Europe, he remembered, blazoned devices of this kind upon their shields, and their descendants still painted their lions and griffins and eagles upon their carriages and stamped them upon their note paper. He was probably right in his surmises, though there are different views upon the subject of totem poles, and the Siwash, who ought to know most about them, seem singularly unwilling to supply inquirers with any reliable information.

A group of brown-faced, black-haired men and women dressed much as white folks stood about the rancherie, and near them were ranged rows of shallow trays of bark containing drying berries. Frank noticed that the woods were full of the latter—hat berries, salmon berries, and splendid black and yellow raspberries. Several big sea canoes were drawn up at the edge of the water, and Mr. Oliver sat near one of them with another cluster of Siwash gathered about him. They had spread a number of peltries out upon the stones, which Mr. Oliver explained were seal skins. Frank examined one, and found it difficult to believe that this coarse, greasy, and nastily smelling hair was the material out of which the beautiful glossy furs were made. He confided his views to Harry.

"Yes," said the latter, "they're not much to look at now. They have to go through quite a lot of dressing, and I've heard that in the first place all the long outside hair is plucked out. There's an inner coat." He looked at the men. "It's done in England, isn't it?"

Mr. Barclay smiled. "A good deal of it is, anyway." Then he addressed Mr. Oliver. "You're buying some of these peltries?"

"One or two," was the answer. "We want an excuse for this visit."

Mr. Barclay made a sign of assent, and after chaffering with the Indians for a few moments Mr. Oliver broke in again: "They're cheap, that's sure. I suppose these fellows would rather sell them on the spot for dollars down than pack them along down to Alberni or some other place where they'd probably have to take grocery stores in payment. If you're open to make a deal we'll take two or three between us. We ought to get our money back with something over in Victoria."

Mr. Oliver kept up the bargaining for a while, and then explained that he and his companion did not care for the rest of the skins, which were inferior to those they had chosen. One of the Siwash thereupon informed him that more canoes were expected in a day or two, adding that he would probably be able to show them further peltries if they could wait their arrival.

"Tell him we'll stay," said Mr. Barclay. "At the same time you had better ask him if there's any likelihood of our getting down to Victoria by water. You can say we've had about enough crawling through the bush—it's a fact that I have—and lead up to the question naturally."

Frank, observing a twinkle in Harry's eyes, watched the Indians' faces when Mr. Oliver addressed them, but they remained perfectly expressionless.

"I can't get anything out of them about the schooner," Mr. Oliver reported at length. "This fellow says the easiest way would be to send our Indians back for the canoe, which I'll do. It's possible that we may chance upon a little more information later on."

"Where do they get the skins?" Frank asked presently, when the Indians had left them.

"That's a point they don't seem much inclined to talk about," Mr. Barclay answered. "They probably follow them in their canoes as they work up north, though it's only odd seals they pick up in that way. The principal supply comes from the Pribyloff Islands up in the Bering Sea. It's supposed that with the exception of a few which frequent some reefs lying nearer Russian Asia practically all the seals in the North Pacific haul out there for two or three months every year. The American lessees club them on the land, but the crews of the Canadian schooners kill a number in open water outside our limit. They claim that although the seals are born on American beaches we don't own them when they're in the sea, but, as it's suggested that they're not always very particular about their exact distance from the islands, their proceedings make trouble every now and then. I'm talking about the fur seals; there are several other kinds which are more or less common everywhere."

He broke off and sat smoking silently for a while, looking at the skins.

"They seem to have taken your fancy," Mr. Oliver observed presently.

"It's a fact," Mr. Barclay assented. "I was just thinking I'd like to take that big one and the other yonder home with me. My daughter Minnie visits East in the winter now and then, and she's fond of furs, though so far I haven't been able to buy her any particularly smart ones. There's a man I know in Portland who can fix up a skin as well as any one in London. He was a good many years in Alaska trading furs for the A. C. C., and some of the Russians who stayed behind there taught him to dress them."

Mr. Oliver laughed. "I suppose the thing is quite out of the question?"

"It is," said Mr. Barclay dryly. "You ought to know that the United States charges a big duty on foreign furs."

"On foreign ones!" broke in Harry, nudging Frank. "A seal born on an American beach could certainly be considered an American seal."

"When you import goods into the United States you require a certificate of origin, young man."

"That fixes the thing," said Harry. "On your own showing, those seals originated on the Pribyloffs. They're American."

"Ingenious!" exclaimed Mr. Barclay, with a longing glance at the skins. "There's some reason in that contention, but won't you go on? You don't seem to have got through yet."

"In case you felt justified in taking a skin or two," continued Harry thoughtfully, "I'd like to point out that, as a rule, the Customs fellows don't trouble about a sloop the size of ours. We just run up to our moorings when we come back from a yachting trip, and there's a nice little nook forward which would just hold a bundle of those peltries. It's hidden beneath the second cable."

Mr. Barclay picked up a piece of shingle and flung it at him.

"You can stop right now before you get yourself into difficulties. What do you mean by proposing a smuggling deal to a man connected with the United States revenue?"

"I'm sorry," Harry answered with a chuckle. "I should have waited until the rest had gone."

Mr. Barclay regarded him severely, though his eyes twinkled.

"Your smartness is going to make trouble for you by and by," he said. "Go and see what that Siwash is doing about our supper."

Harry moved away, but presently came back to announce that the meal was ready. When it was over the boys strolled off toward the reef, leaving the men sitting smoking on the beach.

"That boy of yours told me what seemed a rather curious thing last night," said Mr. Barclay, and he briefly ran over what Harry had related about the man with the peculiar shoulder.

Mr. Oliver listened in evident astonishment.

"It's the first time I've heard of the matter," he exclaimed. "What do you make of it?"

"In the meanwhile I don't quite know what to think. If that man is boss of the gang it explains a good deal that has been puzzling me, but I must own it's considerably more than I expected. The general idea was that he'd cleared out of the country, which would have been a very natural course in view of the fact that he'd probably have been sandbagged if he'd show himself after dark on any wharf of two of the coast states. Anyway, your son's description was quite straight. He seemed sure of him."

"Harry's eyes are as good as yours or mine," said Mr. Oliver with a smile. Mr. Barclay wrinkled his brow.

"There's a point that struck me—though I can't say if it explains the thing. The boy's only young yet, he has imagination and, it's possible, a fondness for detective literature, like the rest of them. Now we'll assume that he had heard of a certain sensational case—a particularly grewsome crime on board an American ship—and the arrest of the rascal accused of it. I needn't point out that the fellow only escaped on a technical point of law and that his picture figured in some of the papers. Isn't that the kind of thing that's likely to make a marked impression on the youthful mind?"

"I can see two objections," responded Mr. Oliver. "In the first place, Harry was away in Idaho while the case was going on. The second one's more important. Harry might try to put the laugh on you, as he did not long ago, but when he makes a concise statement it's to be relied upon. In such a case I've never known him to let his imagination run away with him."

Mr. Barclay spread his hands out in a deprecatory manner.

"Then we'll take the thing for granted, and it certainly simplifies the affair. I'd no trouble in finding the Chinese colony, and though I've no idea how they get the dope, that doesn't matter. The point is that it's very seldom anybody is likely to disturb them in this part of the bush, and there are two inlets handy. A schooner could slip in here a dozen times without being noticed by anybody except the Siwash. Then we have the fact that a notorious rascal who has evidently a hand in the thing was seen heading for the Chinese colony. It seems to me decisive."

"What are you going to do about it?" Mr. Oliver asked.

"Wait and keep my eyes open. If it appears advisable I may communicate with the Canadian authorities later on, though, of course, we must contrive to get our hands on the fellows in American waters. I've an idea it can be done."

Mr. Oliver said nothing further, and by and by, when a thin haze rolled down from the hillside and night closed in, they strolled toward the rancherie, where they were given a strip of floor space not far from the entrance. The boys came in a little later and lay down apart from them and nearer the door, but Frank did not go to sleep. The rancherie was hot and the dull roar of the combers on the reef came throbbing in and made him restless. He lay still for what seemed a considerable time, and at last there was a low sound which might have been made by somebody rising stealthily, after which a dim black object flitted out of the door. Then Harry, who lay close to him, touched his arm.

"Are you asleep?" he asked very softly.

"No," answered Frank. "Where's that fellow going?"

"Get out as quietly as you can," was Harry's reply.

Frank had kept his shirt and trousers on, and after feeling for his boots he arose cautiously, holding them in his hand. In another moment or two he had slipped out into the cool night air and was crossing the shingle in his stockinged feet. Once or twice a stone rattled, but he supposed the sound was lost in the clamor of the reef, for nobody seemed to hear it. When they had left the rancherie some distance behind they sat down.

"Now," said Harry, "I'll tell you my idea. They're expecting the schooner and don't want her to run in while we're about. They've probably had a man on the lookout down by the entrance, and I expect the fellow who went out has been sent by the boss or Tyee to learn if the other one has seen her."

"It's curious some of them didn't hear us," Frank observed thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure that they didn't," Harry admitted. "Anyway, they couldn't stop us without some excuse, and, if I'm right, they certainly wouldn't want to tell us why they wished us to stay in. Of course," he added, "it might make them suspicious, but I don't know any reason why we should point that out to Barclay. The great thing is to keep out of sight in case they follow us."

They put on their boots and crept along in the gloom beneath the rock, heading toward the reefs. A little breeze blew down the hollow, setting the dark firs to sighing, and part of the inlet lay black in their shadow. The rest sparkled in the light of a half-moon which had just risen above the crest of the hill. They could hear the soft splash and tinkle of water rippling among the stones, but now and then this sound was drowned as the roar of the reef grew louder and deeper. Presently a dim, filmy whiteness in front of them resolved itself into a glimmering spray cloud and fountains of spouting foam, and when at length they stopped among a cluster of wet boulders they could see a black ridge of rock thrusting itself out, half buried, into a mad turmoil of frothing water. It lay in the shadow of the rock, and there was no moonlight on the ghostly combers which came seething down upon it. A little outshore, however, the sea sparkled with a silvery radiance except where the shadow of a black head fell upon it. There was not more than a moderate breeze, but the Pacific surge breaks upon and roars about those reefs continually.

A little thrill ran through Frank as he leaned upon one of the wet boulders. It was the first time he had trodden a Pacific beach, and he realized that he had now reached the outermost verge of the West. He could go no farther. The ocean barred his progress, and beyond it lay different lands, whose dark-skinned peoples spoke in other tongues. The white man's civilization stopped short where he stood. Then as he watched the ceaseless shoreward rush of the big combers and looked up at black rock and climbing pines, a strange delight in the new life he led crept into his heart. Dusky shadow and silvery moonlight seemed filled with glamour, and he was learning to love the wilderness as he could never have loved the cities. Besides, he was there to watch for the mysterious schooner, and that alone was sufficient to stir him and put a tension on his nerves. It was more than possible that there were other watchers hidden somewhere in the gloom.

He did not know how long they waited, with the salt spray stinging their faces and the diapason of the surf in their ears, but at last she came, breaking upon his sight suddenly and strangely, as he felt it was most fitting that she should do. Her black headsails swept out of the shadow of the neighboring head, the tall boom-foresail followed, and a second later he saw the greater spread of her after canvas. She drove on, growing larger, into a strip of moonlight, when, for the wind was off the shore, he saw her hull hove up on the side toward him, with the water flashing beneath it and frothing white at her bows.

"She's close-hauled," said Harry. "They'll stretch across to the other side and then put the helm down and let her reach in. It's a mighty awkward place to make when the wind's blowing out."

She plunged once more into the shadow, but Frank could still see her more or less plainly—a tall, slanted mass of canvas flitting swiftly through the dusky blueness of the night. She edged close in with the reef, still carrying everything except her main gaff-topsail, and then as her headsails swept across the entrance the splash of a paddle reached the boys faintly through the clamor of the surf and they heard a hoarse shout.

"There's a canoe yonder," announced Harry. "The Siwash in her is hailing them. They've heard him. Her peak's coming down."

A clatter of blocks broke out and the upper half of the tall mainsail suddenly collapsed. Then the schooner's bows swung around a little until they pointed to the seething froth upon the opposite beach.