HKB
a whole day by going up to Sulphide to notify Tom, it would give Long John a chance to get in ahead of us and perhaps beat us after all."
The bare idea of such a catastrophe was too much for me. I sprang out of my chair, crying, "We'll go, Joe! And we'll start at once! How are we to get up there, Peter? There must be any amount of snow; and we are neither of us any good on skis, even if we had them."
"Yes, there's plenty of snow," replied Peter promptly, entering with heartiness into the spirit of the enterprise, "lots of snow, but you can avoid most of it by taking the ridge on the right of the creek and following along its summit to where it connects with the saddle. You'll find a little cliff up there, barring your way, but by turning to your left and keeping along the foot of the precipice you will come presently to the upper end of the slide, and then, by coming down the slide, you will be able to reach the place where the line of trees used to stand, which is the place you want to reach."
"Is it at all dangerous?" asked Joe.
"Why, yes," replied Peter, "it is a bit dangerous, especially on the slide itself now that the trees are gone; though if you are ordinarily careful you ought to be able to make it all right, there being two of you. For a man by himself it would be risky--a very small accident might strand him high and dry on the mountain--but where there are two together it is reasonably safe."
"Come on, then, Joe," said I. "Let's be off."
"Wait a bit!" cried our guest, holding up his hand. "You talk of staking a claim for Tom Connor; well, suppose you should find the spot where the big tree was rooted out, and should find a vein there--do you know how to write a location-notice?"
"No," said I, blankly. "We don't."
"Well, I'll write you out the form," said Peter. "I've read hundreds of them and I remember it well enough, and you can just copy the wording when you set up your stake--if you have occasion to set one up at all."
He sat down and quickly wrote out the form for us, when, pocketing the paper, we went over to the stable, saddled up, and leaving Peter in charge, away we rode, armed with a pick, a shovel, an ax and a coil of rope.
According to the hermit's directions, instead of following up the bed of the creek which led to his house, we took to the spur on the right, the top of which being treeless, had been swept bare of snow by the winds and presented no serious obstacle to our sure-footed ponies. We were able, therefore, to ride up the mountain so far that we presently found ourselves looking down upon Peter's house, or, rather, upon the mountain of snow which covered it. But here the character of the spur changed, or, to speak more accurately, here the spur ended and another one began. Between the two, half-filled with well-packed snow, lay a deep crevice, which, bearing away down hill to our right, was presently lost among the trees.
"From the lay of the land," said Joe, "I should judge that this is the head of the creek which runs through Big Reuben's gorge--Peter told us it started up here, you remember. And from the look of it," he continued, "I should suppose that the shortest way of getting over to the slide would be to cut right across here to the left through the trees. But that is out of the question: the snow would be ten feet over our heads; so our only way is to cross this gulch and go on up as far as we can along the top of the next ridge, as Peter said."
"Then we shall have to leave the ponies here," I remarked, "and do the rest on foot: there's no getting them across this place."