Part 38 (2/2)

”That's easy,” said Devine. ”It was, quite a while ago, and nature handles these mountains mighty roughly, as you ought to know. She sweeps them with cloudbursts that wash half a hillside into the valleys, and now and then with snowslides and tremendous falls of rock. One of them filled up that creek, and, as far as I can figure, it did rather more. It filled up the gully through which the creek flowed high up on the range, and, while a little water still creeps through, most of the melted snow goes down another creek. As I took the trouble to ascertain, it splits right through the lower slopes and comes out most a league away.”

This seemed reasonable. Most of the streams among those ranges originate, as Weston knew, in the melting snow, but there was still a point his comrade had left unexplained.

”Then where's the lake?” he asked.

Devine laughed.

”You're sitting right beside it now.”

Weston gazed at him in blank astonishment, and then a light broke in on him.

”The willows?” he said. ”The water in that creek would no doubt spread underground, and this is evidently an unusually dry season. Still, Grenfell spoke of a mile or two of water. Where has it gone?”

”That,” explained Devine, ”seems the simplest thing of all. Anyway, I'll give you my theory. When I crawled along the edge of the willows this afternoon, I found the outlet of an old creek and a beaver-dam.

Now we're a.s.suming that the creek I've mentioned once ran into the lake just here, that is, before a snowslide filled up the ravine with debris and diverted the creek into the other gully, the mouth of which is--below--the beaver-dam.”

”You have explained how the water got here, not how it got away,” said Weston, impatiently.

”No,” replied Devine. ”I haven't explained either of them yet; but we'll get on a little. Once, and I don't think it was very long ago, there was a little water with a creek flowing out of it in this hollow. A colony of beavers came along and put up their dam across that creek, and that backed the water up a foot or two. If you'd skirted this hollow you'd have seen that it's tolerably level, and a foot rise would spread the water quite a way. I want to say that it was probably a swamp with only gra.s.s on it when the creek ran through it. Well, the beavers liked the place, and piled up their dam, while the water went farther and farther back across the swamp. Finally, the beavers either died off or something drove them out. It was probably after that that the dam broke down and the water ran off. Then the snowslide cut off the creek, and as the hollow dried out the willows spread across it.”

Weston could find no fault with this train of reasoning, which made comparatively plain Grenfell's long and unsuccessful search.

”Yes,” he admitted, ”it's logical, and I think it's correct. I believe, from what Grenfell once said, that he crossed the range to the east of us, not far away, some years ago with another man, and he must have noticed this valley. Further, I now feel reasonably sure that he and I once stood on the shoulder of the big peak in the southwest and looked right up the hollow.” He smiled rather grimly.

”We naturally saw nothing. We were looking for a lake that had dried out.”

He lay still for a minute or two, and then broached the subject that both had held in abeyance.

”Well,” he said, ”what's to be done?”

”Stay here two days,” advised Devine. ”Gather up a load of specimens and try to trace the vein. Then we'll put in our stakes, and start right off for the settlement, to record as many feet of frontage as the law will allow us. After that, you, as holding the larger share, will see what can be done about handing it over to a company, while I come back with provisions and get the a.s.sessment work put in. You're going to have mighty little trouble about raising the money when people see those specimens.”

He broke off for a moment and glanced back toward the willows.

”In a way,” he added, ”it's rough on Grenfell.”

”Ah,” said Weston, quietly, ”neither you nor I can be sure of that.”

After that there was silence, and it seemed to both of them that the shadows crept in closer about their flickering fire, and that the little wind which sighed among the pine-tops had grown colder. The camp seemed strangely empty, and, glancing around from force of habit once or twice, they realized with a little start that there was now no third figure sitting beside the blaze. The man who had made that weary march with them had taken the unmarked trail.

It was two days later when they started south. Reaching a little desolate settlement in due time, without misadventure, they limped into it, ragged and dusty, leading the pack-horse, which was very lame. They stopped outside a little wooden store which had a kind of rude veranda in front of it, where the loungers sat on hot afternoons, and a man in a white s.h.i.+rt and store trousers came out and leaned on the railing. He had a hard face, and it grew a trifle more grim as he looked at them, for the light had not quite gone, although it was late in the evening.

”Where's Grenfell?” he asked.

”Dead,” said Weston.

The man made a gesture of resignation. He had acquired his money with some difficulty, and there was no great trade in that neighborhood, while it not infrequently happened that his customers failed to pay him when the Government became economical and voted no money for the making of roads, which is the small bush rancher's chief source of support.

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