cking the day they climbed
above timber line for an outlook. As Trilby had cut her foot, (or his
foot, to be accurate), the boy had added her pack to that of broad-backed
Mephistopheles, in whose kyacks he had--much against Long Lester's
teachings--entrusted the entire remainder of their food. Pepper carried
their personal equipment, and now that half their supplies were eaten,
the Bird and Lazybones carried firewood for them from the wooded slopes
below, that they might luxuriate beside a night fire. So far, so
good. But the peak of their night's bivouac was flanked by higher peaks
that cut off their anticipated view, and before the little party could
scale these, they must descend the gorge of another leaping, singing
stream that lay between.

As the pack train followed nimbly down the glacier-smoothed slope, and
along a ledge where the cliff rose sheer on one side, dropping as sheer
on the other, Mephistopheles gave a sudden shrill squeal, and before any
one knew what it was all about, went hurtling over the edge. The boys
stared speechless as the luckless animal hit the cascades below and went
tumbling through the rapids and over a waterfall, till the body was
whirled to the bank and caught in a crevice of the rock.

Here they were, ten days' hike from the nearest base of supplies, and the
entire remainder of their food,--they did not mourn the burro--three
thousand feet below, or more likely washed a mile down stream by this
time, what had not sunk to the bottom.

They might have been in mid-ocean, as Ted had remarked,--stranded on a
desert island,--but for their trout rods, and one rifle. The game laws
could be disregarded in their extremity. But they were days from the last
deer they had sighted, and their main dependence must be on the fishing.

Ahead, the trail wound down into a grove of rich tan trunks against the
green of juniper. Gray granite worn into fantastic shapes,--castles and
giant tables,--dwarfed and twisted trees rooted in rock crevices, white
waters roaring against the canyon wall like a storm-wind in the
tree-tops, fallen trunks, patches of flaming fire-weed. This was the
wilderness against which they must pit their wild-craft if they would eat.

By the time the sun slanted at five o'clock, Norris called a halt by the
side of a moist green meadow where the burros would find browse, and all
hands turning to and unpacking the kyacks, they hobbled the animals with
a neat loop about their fore-le