light. Once he slipped and fell, slithering twenty feet and barely
saving himself from an almost perpendicular drop of a hundred. He
crawled back with difficulty, but his rifle was gone. He had heard it
clang far below him. However, he had his belt gun, and so was on a par
with Gavin.

His objective was what seemed to be a notch in the summit. It was what
he would make for were he in Gavin's place. He toiled upward
methodically, without hurry now, for there might be a long trail ahead.
If Gavin could go to the Cache so could he. The timber began to thin
out, to stunt. Trees were dwarfed, twisted by the mountain winds, mere
miniatures. Presently they ceased altogether. He was above timberline.

There the thin snow partially covered the ground, increasing the
difficulty of travel. But its actinic qualities gave more light. It was
past midnight, and the moon was well up. He had been traveling for more
than seven hours.

For a moment he paused to rest, his lungs feeding greedily on the thin,
cold air, and surveyed the scene below. It was a black fur of tree-tops,
rolling, undulating, cleft with lines of greater darkness indicating
greater depths. He could look over the tops of lesser mountains. Above
were the peaks of the range, whitened spires against the sky.

In those far heights of the mountain wilderness one seemed to touch the
rim of space itself. The moon, the night, the height produced an effect
of unspeakable vastness. It seemed to press in, to enfold the tiny atom
crawling upon and clinging to the surface of the earth. There finite and
infinite made contact. It was like the world's end, the _Ultima Thule_
of ancient man.

Some such thoughts, vague, scarcely formed, passed through his mind.
The ranch, ploughed land, houses, seemed to belong to another world.

Once more he began to climb, and now that he was close to the summit the
going was easier. Suddenly he stopped. There, clear in the moonlight,
was the track of a moccasin-clad foot.

There was no doubt that it was Gavin's. Knowing his own pace Angus knew
that the big man could not be far ahead. No doubt he would keep going,
over the summit and down the other side, for timber. Once in the timber,
with a fire, he would rest. His trail across would be covered by the
first wind. He would not suspect that any one would or could follow him
by night.

Angus followed the trail easily by the bright moonlight, noting grimly
that the length of the stride was al