that town sounded awfully familiar
to me," he said.

When we came into camp with our rabbits, he went straight up to Fitz.

"I hear you hurt your arm in the April Day mine," he said.

"Yes. I was working there," answered Fitz. "Why?"

Van Sant stuck out his hand. "Shake," he said. "My father owns that
mine--or most of it. Ever hear of him?"

"No," said Fitz, flushing. "I'm just a mucker and a sorter. My father's
a miner."

"Well, shake," laughed Van Sant. "I never even mucked or sorted, and you
know more than I do about it. My father just owns--and if it wasn't for
the workers like you and your father, the mine wouldn't be worth owning.
See? I'm mighty sorry you got hurt there, though."

Fitz shook hands. "It was partly my own fault," he said. "I took a
chance. That was before your father bought the mine, anyway."

Then he went to cooking and we cleaned our game. But from that time on
we knew the Red Fox Scouts to be all right, and their being from the
East made no difference in them. So we and they used each other's
things, and we all mixed in together and were one party.

We had a good camp and a big rest, this night: the first time of real
peace since a long while back, it seemed to me. The next morning we
pushed on, following up along the creek, and a faint trail, for the
pass.

This day's march was a hard climb, every hour, and it took our wind,
afoot. But by evening old Pilot Peak wasn't far at all. His snow patches
were getting larger. When we camped in a little park we must have been
up about eleven thousand feet, and the breeze from the Divide ahead of
us blew cool.

The march now led through aspens and pines and wild flowers, with the
stream singing, and forming little waterfalls and pools and rapids, and
full of those native trout about as large as your two fingers. There was
the old Indian trail, to guide us. It didn't have a track except
deer-tracks, and we might have been the only white persons ever here.
That was fine. Another sign was the amount of game. Of course, some of
the game may have been driven here by the forest fire. But we saw lots
of grouse, which sat as we passed by, and rabbits and porcupines, and
out of the aspens we jumped deer.

We arrived where the pretty little stream, full of songs and pictures
and trout, came tumbling out of a canyon with bottom space for just it
alone. The old Indian trail obliqued off, up a slope, through the timber
on the right, and so did we.

It