I advanced
with the torch. Patiently he waited beneath a leaning tree trunk. Ten
feet from him I knelt upon the velvet needles of the forest, and with
torch held aloft, steadied the six-shooter, aimed carefully, and fired.

At the shot the rat disappeared. I pressed forward confident that at
last I had scored a hit. The torch had gone out. I was feeling among
the dead needles for the rat's mangled body when my fingers touched
something wooden. Instantly the pest was forgotten. By the light of a
match I saw that I had uncovered the corner of a little box. It
flashed upon me that I had stumbled upon the cache where the old
prospectors had hidden their gold. They were gone; the gold was mine!

I tugged and tugged till I dragged it from its concealment beneath the
rotting log. In trembling haste I tore off its cover. Then...

I staggered back with a cry of dismay! The box was filled with old,
crystallized dynamite. An inch above the top layer of the deadly stuff
was a fresh hole where my bullet had crashed through. A little lower
and it would have hit the powder crystals!

The next morning snow lay deep about the tent. It was impossible to
make my way through the woods. I was marooned far from civilization.
The wind rose; crashing among the peaks, tearing along the ridges,
roaring through the passes. Blinding clouds came sifting down from the
wind-swept heights.

After days of patient waiting, I started the laborious climb upward,
for it was impossible to make progress downward, where the soft snow
lay. Now, like the sheep, I would take advantage of those wind-swept
stretches above timberline.

Before dawn I was on my way. It required three hours to gain the first
mile. Then, as I reached the cleared stretches, progress became
easier. Though the wind came in angry squalls, that sometimes flung me
headlong, and buffeted and drove me about, the going underfoot was good.

If I could keep my bearings and head northward, steer out around the
heads of countless canyons, hold my given altitude above timberline, I
would eventually reach a spot some miles above the valley where the
home ranch lay. All day I plodded. The wind did not abate, but came
in a gale from the west. At times it dropped to perhaps fifty miles an
hour, and again it rose to more than a hundred miles; it shrieked,
pounded at the cliffs, tore the battered timberline trees to bits,
caught up frozen snow crust and crashed it among the