of self which
had made his winter a nightmare. And when he stood erect again it seemed
that the old earth had a stirring, electrifying impetus for his feet.
Something black, bitter, melancholy, and morbid, always unreal to him,
had passed away forever. The great moment had been forced upon him. He
did not believe Roy Beeman's preposterous hint regarding Helen; but he
had gone back or soared onward, as if by magic, to his old true self.

Mounted on Dale's strongest horses, with only a light pack, an ax, and
their weapons, the two men had reached the snow-line on the pass by noon
that day. Tom, the tame cougar, trotted along in the rear.

The crust of the snow, now half thawed by the sun, would not hold
the weight of a horse, though it upheld the men on foot. They walked,
leading the horses. Travel was not difficult until the snow began to
deepen; then progress slackened materially. John had not been able to
pick out the line of the trail, so Dale did not follow his tracks. An
old blaze on the trees enabled Dale to keep fairly well to the trail;
and at length the height of the pass was reached, where the snow was
deep. Here the horses labored, plowing through foot by foot. When,
finally, they sank to their flanks, they had to be dragged and goaded
on, and helped by thick flat bunches of spruce boughs placed under their
hoofs. It took three hours of breaking toil to do the few hundred yards
of deep snow on the height of the pass. The cougar did not have great
difficulty in following, though it was evident he did not like such
traveling.

That behind them, the horses gathered heart and worked on to the edge
of the steep descent, where they had all they could do to hold back from
sliding and rolling. Fast time was made on this slope, at the bottom of
which began a dense forest with snow still deep in places and windfalls
hard to locate. The men here performed Herculean labors, but they got
through to a park where the snow was gone. The ground, however, soft and
boggy, in places was more treacherous than the snow; and the travelers
had to skirt the edge of the park to a point opposite, and then go on
through the forest. When they reached bare and solid ground, just before
dark that night, it was high time, for the horses were ready to drop,
and the men likewise.

Camp was made in an open wood. Darkness fell and the men were resting
on bough beds, feet to the fire, with Tom curled up close by, and the
horses still droopi