ch curled through the stupendous portals of
stream-worn stone. Seaforth felt moist and generally uncomfortable, as
well as weary, for it was humid and a trifle warmer now, while his long
boots were soaked, and at every step he dragged after him a clogging
weight of snow. He leaned against a cedar, glad to rest a while, and
glanced inquiringly at his comrade.

Alton, however, showed no sign of fatigue. He stood with the
half-melted snow he had fallen in clinging about his deerskin jacket
and trickling slowly down his tattered leggings, the bridle of the
worn-out horse in his hand and a slight perplexity in his eyes.

"Now, I wonder if that will make a road to the south," he said
reflectively, pointing to the canon.

"I don't know," said Seaforth dryly. "So far as my opinion goes, I
scarcely think it will; but isn't that a little outside the question?
Just now a road to the north would be more to the purpose."

"Well," said Alton, "a few sticks of giant powder here and there would
make a difference, and one could do a good deal with a few score of men
used to the pick and drill."

"It would also," said Seaforth, "take a good many dollars to pay them."

Alton laughed as he turned, and pointed upstream, Darkness was not far
away, and the river came down deep and slow out of the dimness. Dark
pines rolled up the hillsides that shut it in, and wisps of grey vapour
drifted about them.

"There are," he said, "dollars enough to build a road right down to
Vancouver in those hills, and by and by one of two men will have his
hands on them."

"Isn't that a somewhat curious way of putting it?" said his companion.

"Well," said Alton, "there is as usual a reason. Whichever of those
men comes out on top will not have much use for the other fellow. In
the meanwhile we'll be getting on. There's a canoe under the big
boulders yonder, and the island should make the horse a corral."

Seaforth said nothing, though he thought a good deal. He guessed that
one of the men alluded to was his comrade and the other Hallam, and
there was a grim suggestiveness in the former's simple explanation, for
it seemed that Alton understood quarter would not be given in the
struggle he had embarked upon. There was also something disconcerting
in the fact that they found the canoe where he indicated. That it had
lain there since Jimmy the prospector, who lay sleeping on the heights
above them, had last used it emphasized the desolation of