ross!"

"Did the big fellow get a leg up on his job; or did the soldier fellow
get the bounce for going outside regulations?"

"That is possible, too." The old man was handing off the saddles and
camp kit.

"If you'll wait here, sir, I'll go along for the horses! I don't know
the trails along on this side! It's outside the N. F!"

There was no moonlight to guide him; but there was the wall of blue sky
where the mountains opened; and he followed up the lake shore with a
sense of feel more than sight for one of those little indurated game
tracks that would lead back over the stones to the trail that the outlaws
had seemed to follow. If you think it an easy thing to walk over a pile
of moraine by the obscure light preceding dawn--try it! The great
moraines flank the mountains in petrified billows stranded on the shores
of time from the ice ages, in stones from the size of a spool to a house.
Step on the small stones; and they roll, bringing down the whole bank in
a miniature slide under your feet! Pick your way over the sharp edges of
the big rocks; and the glazed moisture is slippery as ice; but he, whose
foot hold fumbles, has no business in the mountain world; and the Ranger
swung from crest to crest of the pointed rocks, safely shrouded in the
lake mist, guided solely by the blank glare of sky between the mountain
walls.

He could hear the tinkle of waters down the ledges on his right; and the
little flutter of wind riffling through the Pass sucking up the mists
forewarned dawn. He had climbed the roll of stone slowly, picking each
step, for, perhaps, two-hundred feet, when that trail sense of _feel_
made him stoop to examine the ground. The roll of moraine he had climbed
met another stone billow; and between the two ran a groove, a little
narrow hardened tracing where the tracks of game going to and from
watering place had packed and worked in between the rolling pebbles the
ice dust of a million years.

This, then, was the trail that the outlaws must have followed away from
the lake. He stooped to examine closer. There were horse tracks. Had
his own horses stumbled up from the lake along this trail? It would lead
back to the camp fire of the night before. Better reconnoitre while
there was still the hiding of the mist.

He looked back. The lake was obliterated by the mist curling up; but
above he could see the black rocks of the precipice trail as if the Pass
behind had closed its doors agains