Ross could scarcely believe the evidence of his own senses when he saw Lon Weston riding along the trail below the dump. The boy had pushed the car with its load of ore out to the bumper and dumped it before he saw the horseman in the sheepskin coat, the hairy chaps, and a fur cap drawn over forehead and ears. The horse shied at the chunks of ore rolling almost to its feet, and Weston looked up.

"Hello, there!" shouted Ross. "What on earth are you doing here?"

Weston drew in his horse. "Hello, Doc!" he returned with gruff pleasantness without answering the question.

"Doc" slipped and slid down the snowy path to the trail, and held out a cordial hand.

"How’s your leg?"

"All right." Weston gripped the extended hand heartily. "Almost as good ’s new."

His brown eyes above his heavy stubby beard held a pleasanter expression than Ross had seen in them while nursing their owner. They were deep eyes, capable of mirroring accurately the varied moods of the man looking out of them.

"I didn’t recognize you in Cody three weeks ago," Ross was beginning when Weston interrupted him.

Leaning down from his saddle he met the boy’s eyes steadily. "Remember," he said slowly and meaningly, "that you didn’t see me–nor hear from me–in Cody."

"All right," agreed Ross, embarrassed by the fixity of the other’s stare. "I’ll forget it hereafter, but I want to thank––"

"Cut it out," commanded Weston briefly, straightening again in the saddle.

"At least," invited Ross, "you’ll come to dinner with me. Uncle Jake is frying ham and onions. Smell ’em? I got some onions and half a dozen apples over at Camp Sunday." His voice could not have been more eager had he been relating the finding of free gold. "Come on in, and have some."

Weston’s eyes slipped away from Ross’s in a way which reminded the latter of Waymart’s, and rested on the smoke from the cabin a quarter of a mile away.

"Guess not, to-day. Thank you just the same. The boys are probably rustlin’ grub this minute and they’ll be expectin’ me. See you again."Ross stood motionless, looking after him. Weston rode sitting straight, unlike the usual careless forward droop of the cow puncher. He was a well-built man, although his shoulders were rather narrow. But the only characteristic that Ross noticed was the grip of the left knee against the horse. For the strength of that grip he was responsible, but it was a responsibility which Lon did not seem to recognize.

Suddenly the boy realized the newcomer’s words. So Sandy and Waymart were expecting him, but had said nothing about it to Ross. And when Ross had told them about Lon Weston at the stage camp they had made no sign that they knew him. That was strange.

He turned slowly toward the cabin, where Weimer was frying ham and onions and boiling coffee. Opening the cabin door he was met by a white gust of steam mingled with savory smoke. He propped the door open, and brought in an armful of wood.

Weimer, in his shirt-sleeves, was bending his head over a little stove, which offered barely room for a small kettle and a skillet with a coffee-pot sandwiched in between. A sheet-iron oven stood on the floor, the top answering for a sideboard. When Weimer made biscuits and sour dough bread, the oven was placed on top of the stove.Ross threw his wood down on the hard dirt floor, and put a stick into the stove by way of the wide front door. The pine instantly blazed up, showing a wide crack which zigzagged across the side of the old stove.

"Uncle Jake,"–Ross sat back on one heel, and looked up at his partner whose blinking eyes were in the gloom of the cabin unprotected now by goggles,–"Uncle Jake, a stranger has just come into Meadow Creek City on the Limited."

Weimer chuckled. Before the advent of his youthful "pard" the old man–Ross always thought of him as old despite his black hair and great strength–had not laughed in months.

"He stopped at the second station," pursued Ross.

Weimer’s face instantly darkened. "At the McKenzies’? One of dem consarned gang, he ist?"

"That’s what I want to know. It’s Lon Weston, the fellow I told you I took care of at the stage camp."

Weimer dumped ham and onions into an agateware basin, and set it on the table. "I don’t know him, I don’t. But he comes to der McKenzies, hein? Und after all dose days you spen’ mit him!" Uncle Jack frowned heavily, and, sitting down, helped himself to boiled "spuds.""I tink I knew all dem consarned gang, but dere ist no Veston mit ’em."

Ross dragged to the little bare board table a box marked in big letters, "Ruford’s Canned Tomatoes, The Yellow Brand," and, turning the box on end, straddled it opposite Weimer.

Weimer, eating and drinking noisily, found time to ask vindictively, "Ist he for more medicine come mit you?"

Ross shook his head, and bent over his plate.

The plate was tin. The cup out of which he drank his coffee was also tin. His knife and fork were steel, and his spoon was pewter. The place of the lacking milk pitcher was usurped by a tin can of condensed milk with the top bent back and the milk dried all over the sides. But Ross ate–how he ate! Potatoes followed ham, and coffee followed potatoes, and onions followed both, and then he began all over again. Never had eating been such serious work with him. But never, also, had his muscles been so firm and hard. As for a pickaxe, it was coming to feel no heavier than the baseball bat which he had always rather scorned.

"I wonder," he began after a pause, "what Lon’s up to here, anyway."

The question started Weimer on his favorite topic, the claim jumpers and the injustice of the mining laws. He could not talk fast enough in English, and so dropped into his native German.

Ross, accustomed to his tirades, cleared away the dishes, pushed the table back against the dirt chinked logs, and lay down on the blankets of his bunk for a few moments, his eyes glued on the little nickel clock.

He broke into the other’s scolding monologue. "In ten minutes we must go back to work."

Weimer scowled darkly. His lids, red and swollen, almost obscured his pale-blue eyes. "Mine eyes ist too pad to-day," he declared. "I vill not to go out in de sun again."

A few weeks before, this oft-repeated declaration had alarmed Ross. Now he made no reply. But, when the hands of the nickel clock indicated one, he arose and put on his oiled jumper and oilskin cap.

"Come, Uncle Jake," he said in a strong, decided tone. "Here are your goggles. Get busy, or the McKenzie outfit will have our claims in spite of us. Now, when there are three to watch instead of two, we must show the mettle we’re made of."

Moved by the magic statement, ever new and ever powerful, that the claims might be jumped, Uncle Jake, forgetting that in substance he had made the same objection to work twice a day for weeks and that Ross had overcome his objections in substantially the same way, "got busy." And presently Ross led him out, his eyes not only securely goggled, but covered as well with a black cloth which he pressed fearfully against the goggles.

The snow was Weimer’s evil genius. He lived in dread of the sight of it. Without assistance he would not move a dozen paces away from the cabin after the sun had risen on Meadow Creek Valley. But the fear of the light had made as great an impression on his mind as the light itself had made on his eyes, and he had fallen into the habit, before Ross came, of staying in his cabin during cloudy days, lest, if he ventured out, the sun might break through the clouds.

The old partner and the young went up the steep trail to the tunnel, Ross leading Weimer up over the side of the dump and into the mouth of the tunnel. In the shelter of its gloom the latter removed his goggles; and, stumbling along over the chunks of ore lying beside the narrow track, he reached the end of the short tunnel which had been blasted from the solid rock. Lighting a fresh candle, he set it in its socket at the end of a sharply pointed iron, a miner’s candlestick, and, jabbing the point into a crevice, leisurely surveyed the wall before him. Behind him the little empty car filled the tunnel with sound as Ross pushed it rattling and jolting over the rusty rails."Ready to drill for another shot, ain’t we?" Ross asked. He pushed the car back out of the way. "Got to hustle to get it done this afternoon, too."

Under the stimulus of Ross’s presence and hustle the older man fell to work valiantly, but it was slow work. Down in Miners’ Camp machinery performed the task which Weimer was doing laboriously with the aid of a hand drill. Before him, at the end of the tunnel, was a seamed and uneven wall of rock a little higher than his head and a little broader than his reach had he extended his arms on either side. In this wall he patiently drilled three sets of holes, into which the "sticks" were placed for the next "shot," as the explosion of dynamite was called. In mining terms the old man was "putting a shot." Near the top of the wall he made three holes. Half-way down were two more, long and inclined toward each other at the top. These were the "cut-in holes." Lastly, at the foot of the wall were three large holes called "lifters." The contents of the top holes and the cut-ins were set off first, splintering and cracking the rock. Then the lifters were exploded, actually lifting the loosened mass above it and hurling it into the tunnel.

When quiet reigned again, and Ross had loaded his hand car with the dÉbris, he pushed it out on the dump again through the moist, freezing atmosphere of the tunnel. There was water everywhere. Near the mouth of the tunnel it was frozen on the sides and the top, and carpeted the floor with slush. Further in it was unfrozen, oozing out of the sides, dripping from the roof, running along the track. It covered the oiled garments of the men at work. It put out their candles. It made muck of the quartz dust on the floor. It often destroyed the lighted fuses.

There was something maddening to Ross in its incessant drip and drizzle, and he always emerged on the dump with a feeling of relief, especially when the sun shone as it did that day in dazzling brightness.

He dumped the car, and was about to push it back when his eyes fell on Weston’s horse journeying on the back trail riderless.

"That means," thought Ross, "that he’s going to stay. Why?"

A feeling of relief was mixed with uneasiness. The relief was caused by this further link in the chain of evidence that when the trail to Miners’ Camp was closed it would not close on Weimer and him alone. The uneasiness had to do with the mission of the McKenzie outfit in Meadow Creek Valley. Why were they reinforced by Weston?"Oh!" exclaimed Ross aloud in sudden disgust with himself. "He’s come to hunt, of course! His gun was strapped on behind. I never thought of that. If he belongs to the McKenzie outfit, he’d rather hunt than eat."

It seemed to him that the "outfit" bore him not the slightest grudge or ill will. Sandy, indeed, seemed openly to like him, Waymart tolerated him with a surly good humor, while Weston–here Ross knit his brow–Weston baffled him completely; still, considering the incident of the note in Cody, the boy looked on him as a friend albeit one who evidently did not care to pose in that capacity before the McKenzies.

From his position Ross could look down and across on the claims of the McKenzies and almost into the "discovery hole" in which they were supposed to be working. Waymart was leisurely drilling a hole in the rock to receive a stick of dynamite when Sandy came out of the cabin and walked rapidly toward him.

The two talked together a moment, and then Weston joined them. In a moment the three fell apart, and appeared to be talking excitedly. Presently Waymart dropped the discussion, and turning his back walked away a few steps with his hands in his pockets and stood in a listening attitude. Ross watched with absorbing interest. Even at that distance he could see that the discussion between the other two was not amiable. The scene lasted but a few moments, and then all three descended to the cabin together.

That evening after supper, Ross washed the day’s dishes, brought in wood, and put the room to rights, while Weimer alternately smoked and snored in his bunk. The room was dimly lighted by candles in candlesticks thrust into logs. Ross, so tired and sleepy he could scarcely keep his eyes open, hung up the dish-pan on its nail beside the stove, and looked longingly toward the emergency chest pushed beneath his bunk. Not one word had he mastered of the contents of the books he had stowed away there with such high hopes.

"I don’t believe the McKenzies are coming over," he told Weimer, as he filled the stove and wound up the clock. "It’s too late for them."

Weimer made no reply. His pipe had fallen on his chest, and his hair-encircled mouth was wide open in a vacuous sleep. At that moment the rising wind beat the snow against the window, and Ross uttered an exclamation. He had forgotten to shut the tool-house door, and, fearing that with the wind in the south the little log house would be filled with snow before morning, he went back up the trail to the tunnel. Climbing noiselessly over the soft snow, he arrived at the ore dump, and was making for the tool house across the mouth of the tunnel when a light flickered in his path.

Startled, he looked into the tunnel, and saw three figures at the end silhouetted against the dim candle-light.

"Lon, Sandy and Waymart," he muttered.

There was no danger of his being discovered, so dark was the night. Therefore, he sat down on his heels beside the tool house, and watched, puzzled at first to understand the movements of the men.

"Oh," he muttered suddenly, "they’re measuring to see how fast the work is going."

With a tape line the men were estimating the cubic feet of rock excavated by Ross and Weimer.

Ross hugged his knees, and exulted. His "friends the enemy" might measure all they chose, he thought; and every length of the tape line would reveal to them the futility of waiting to jump the Weimer-Grant claims.

Presently the three started out of the tunnel. Ross, seeking a hiding-place, found it behind a clump of low spruce trees at the right of the tunnel’s mouth. The intruders blew out their candles as they came out on the dump.

"At this rate," Ross heard Waymart say, "they’re solid on these here claims."

But, although he strained his ears, he could hear nothing more. After a brief wait the last sound of twigs breaking under their shoes died away; and Ross, leaving his hiding-place, shut the tool-house door and went back to the cabin.

He found Weimer awake and whistling in his bunk. Ross paused at the door, regarding him curiously. It was the first time he had ever heard the old man make this cheerful sound, although Steele had said he used to be called Whistling Weimer as well as Dutch Weimer.

"Hello, Uncle Jake!" cried Ross. "Feeling pretty gay, aren’t you?"

Weimer stopped in the middle of his tune, and blinked at Ross. "Nein," he denied, "I ain’t feelin’ gay. If your eyes vas––"

Ross interrupted. "Now, see here, Uncle Jake; you know your eyes are better since I’ve taken to doctoring them."

The last few weeks had certainly improved the old man. His eyes were better, owing to a cooling lotion which Ross had dropped under the lids twice a day. Weimer’s mind was clearer because his growing confidence in his young partner had quieted his fears. Ross’s cheerfulness was also contagious. Nor did the cleanliness on which the boy insisted lower Weimer’s vitality. Soap became a known quantity to him.

All these favorable circumstances reacted on Weimer’s work. He was becoming more and more efficient, and Ross’s spirits had risen as the days passed; and he saw the growing intelligence manifested by the other in regard to operations in the tunnel. This change for the better in Uncle Jake had not passed unnoticed by the McKenzies.

Ross said nothing to the old man about the scene he had just witnessed in the tunnel. It would do no good, and would only inflame the other’s wrath. Therefore, he snuffed the candles, repeating mechanically:

"Don’t believe the McKenzies are coming over to-night."

But at that moment footsteps sounded outside the door. The snow creaked under the pressure of shoes, and Sandy and Waymart entered.

Sandy was as gay and talkative as ever, but not Waymart. He sat down on a box, leaned back against the logs, turned up his coat collar to protect himself from the icy wind, which sought out the dirt-chinked crevices, and, pulling a mouth-organ from his pocket, began to play. Nor did he stop until Sandy rose to go. A sombre figure he made back among the shadows, his eyes resting vacantly on the floor at his feet. One leg was crossed over the other, the toe moving in time to the discordant music. Waymart’s thoughts did not seem to be cheerful companions.But Sandy had drawn a box close up beside the roaring fire, and sat with his elbows on his knees and a pipe in his mouth. He paid no attention to Weimer nor to his musical brother, but told Ross yarns of the gold-fields of Montana and Nevada, tales concerning other men, Ross noticed; Sandy never talked about himself.

The evening passed and the men rose to depart without having mentioned the newcomer; and Ross, with the thought of their previous reticence concerning him in mind, waited for them to speak first.

It was Sandy who spoke, but not until his hand was on the door and Waymart stood outside the cabin. Then he said carelessly, as though Ross had never seen Weston before, and as though the coming of a relative was an every-day event in Meadow Creek Valley:

"Cousin hiked it over the mountain to-day. We’re goin’ t’ strike th’ trail over t’ the Divide to-morrow, huntin’. He’s great on game."

"So," thought Ross, "I’m right. It’s hunting that has brought him here."

The next morning at daylight, Ross, eating breakfast, chanced to glance out of the dirty west window. Up near the summit of Soapweed Ledge, which met Crosby at right angles, he saw three figures advancing single file. Each carried a gun, and had a small pack and snow-shoes strapped on his back.

"Uncle Jake," asked Ross suddenly, "have you ever been over to the Divide?"

Weimer shook his head. "No, I stay home and attend to pizness."

"Haven’t you ever crossed that mountain?" Ross indicated Soapweed Ledge.

"Yes."

"What’s beyond?"

"More mountains," answered Weimer vaguely, "und peyond dem more und more."

It was a week before the hunters returned, a long lonely week for Ross. Each morning he told himself hopefully that before night Leslie might return, but, to his increasing dismay, no Leslie came.

"Can it be that an accident has happened to him, somewhere, alone, or has he changed his mind about coming and gone back home?"

Ross asked himself this question as he stood at the mouth of the tunnel one morning staring in the direction of Soapweed Ledge. A heavy snowstorm had set in that morning, and in the afternoon the falling snow shrouded the Ledge in a white veil out of which the three men now emerged, moving slowly across the little valley. Their snow-shoes were on their feet, and in place of the light packs with which they had started their shoulders were bent under loads of venison.

The McKenzies had returned.

That evening Waymart appeared at Weimer’s door with a goodly portion of meat, at which Ross looked dubiously.

"You’ve given us so much already," he hesitated.

Waymart interrupted. "Jerk it," he directed briefly. "Jerked meat makes a good stew when ye can’t git no fresh meat." He turned sharply to Weimer in his bunk. "See here, Uncle Jake, have ye forgot how t’ jerk venison?"

Weimer crawled out of his bunk, scowling. "Vell, I haf nicht dat. I guess I jerk him so gud as anypody."

"Get about it then!" retorted Waymart with rough kindness. "Here’s a meat knife to shred it up with."

He laid a large, sharp knife on the table, and cut Ross’s thanks short by an abrupt departure.

Weimer, grumbling at the interruption to his rest, cut the meat in long, thin strips, which, he told Ross, were to be nailed to the outside of the shack after the storm had passed. But in the morning, Ross, objecting to a process which brought the meat into contact with the dirty logs, stretched a cord between two trees, and over it, in the sunshine, folded the strips clothespin fashion, leaving them for the air to cure and dry.

For two or three days the McKenzies did not visit their neighbors. Ross saw them outside their shack occasionally, and something in the air and attitudes spoke, even at that distance, of disagreement.

One evening at six o’clock Weimer stumbled out of the tunnel alone and down the path, the darkness robbing the snow of its terrors. A few moments later, Ross, having laid the dry sticks in the drilled holes in the end wall of the tunnel, lighted the fuses, and, candle in hand, made for the mouth.

He came out on Lon Weston sitting on a stump which projected above the dump.

"Hello, Doc," greeted Lon Weston.

"Hello, Weston." Ross was so astonished to see him there that he nearly forgot to count the explosions that just then thundered in the tunnel behind him.

"One, two, three, four, five." That accounted for the five sticks.

He leaned against the tool house, and looked at Lon through the dusk. Lon’s cap was pulled down over his eyes. His sheepskin collar was turned up, meeting the cap. All that was visible of his face was a bit of beard protruding around the stem of the pipe. But the voice sounded a more amiable note than it ever had in the stage camp, although his manner revealed an uneasy embarrassment.

"Well, Doc, how d’ye like minin’?"

"I don’t like it at all," replied Ross honestly.

"Seems t’ like you all right," returned Lon. "You’re in better flesh and color than you was down on Dry Creek."

"So are you," retorted Ross, laughing.

Lon made no reply. He moved restlessly.

"Done any studyin’ in that pile o’ books ye had along?" he asked abruptly after a time.

"No." Ross’s tone was crisp. "Haven’t studied a word." The subject was a tender one with him.

There ensued a pause. Ross opened the door of the tool house, and threw in his pick and shovel. He hitched the legs of his high rubber boots nearer his body; and then, as Lon made no move toward going, he swung his numbed hands briskly.

"I thought," Lon began again in a constrained and hesitating way, "that you was mighty anxious about those books. I thought your goin’ to some college or other depended on your gettin’ outside of those books."

Ross struck his hands rapidly together. "I can’t study," he answered briefly. "I get too tired working."

Weston arose and faced toward the cabin of the McKenzies.

"Another storm comin’," he announced. "Get here day after to-morrow."

"That’s Christmas," muttered Ross. His heart contracted sharply, and a homesick pang assailed him. In his ignorance, before leaving home, he had set Christmas as the date of his return.