aining yards with a haste that left Hazel panting
behind. Above her he stood balanced on a bowlder, cut sharp against
the sky, and she reached him just as he lowered the field glasses with
a long sigh of relief. His eyes shone with exultation.

"Come on up on the perch," he invited, and reached forth a long,
muscular arm, drawing her up close betide him on the rock.

"Behold the Promised Land," he breathed, "and the gateway thereof,
lying a couple of miles to the north."

They were, it seemed to Hazel, roosting precariously on the very summit
of the world. On both sides the mountain pitched away sharply in
rugged folds. Distance smoothed out the harsh declivities, blurred
over the tremendous canons. Looking eastward, she saw an ample basin,
which gave promise of level ground on its floor. True, it was ringed
about with sky-scraping peaks, save where a small valley opened to the
south. Behind them, between them and the far Pacific rolled a sea of
mountains, snow-capped, glacier-torn, gigantic.

"Down there," Roaring Bill waved his hand, "there's a little meadow,
and turf to walk on. Lord, I'll be glad to get out of these rocks!
You'll never catch me coming in this way again. It's sure tough going.
And I've been scared to death for a week, thinking we couldn't get
through."

"But we can?"

"Yes, easy," he assured. "Take the glasses and look. That flat we
left our outfit in runs pretty well to the top, about two miles along.
Then there's a notch in the ridge that you can't get with the naked
eye, and a wider canon running down into the basin. It's the only
decent break in the divide for fifty miles so far as I can see. This
backbone runs to high mountains both north and south of us--like the
great wall of China. We're lucky to hit this pass."

"Suppose we couldn't get over here?" Hazel asked. "What if there
hadn't been a pass?"

"That was beginning to keep me awake nights," he confessed. "I've been
studying this rock wall for a week. It doesn't look good from the east
side, but it's worse on the west, and I couldn't seem to locate the gap
I spotted from the basin one time. And if we couldn't get through, it
meant a hundred miles or more back south around that white peak you
see. Over a worse country than we've come through--and no cinch on
getting over at that. Do you realize that it's getting late in the
year? Winter may come--bing!--inside of ten days. And me caught in a
rock pile, with no