two had been travelling, hoping on its summit to gain a better view of the surrounding country.

[4]

“Andy,” he said, “I smell smoke. Sound encouraging?”

The young man reached his side, and the two stood looking in every direction and sniffing speculatively.

“I get it, too, Doctor,” Andy told the other finally. “It seems to be over in that direction.”

Andy pointed west, and the doctor nodded silently.

“There’s a ranch or a camp pretty close,” he decided. “Now let’s locate that smoke definitely and make a bee-line for it. I don’t just fancy a night in this cold, unfriendly forest.”

“Do you know, Dr. Shonto,” said Andy, “that I don’t exactly think of the forest as unfriendly. Time and again, when you and I have been together in the outlands, you’ve thought nature unkind—bleak—unfriendly. Nature never strikes me that way.”

“That’s your inheritance from your Alps-climbing Swiss ancestors, I imagine,” replied the doctor. “But, if you’ll pardon me, Andrew, I’m more interested right now in locating a welcoming curl of blue smoke over the treetops than I am in a discussion of the attitude of Mother Nature toward two of her misplaced atoms. Look over there to the west. (I suppose that’s west.) Don’t you imagine you see a thin stream of smoke going up over there—just above that massive bull pine on the brow of that hill? Confound this infernal fog!”

[5]“Yes, I believe you’re right,” Andy agreed after looking a long time in the direction the doctor had indicated. And after another pause—“Yes, smoke, all right. And if it weren’t for the fog it would spread, and we’d never have seen it. Now what, Doctor?”

[5]

Dr. Shonto gave the surrounding country careful study.

“It seems to me,” he decided, “that, if we head straight for that tall fir on the brow of the hill beyond the next one, we ought to see what’s causing the smoke. But we’ve got to go down and up, down and up; and we’ll pass through heavy timber between here and there. We must keep our wits about us and not swerve from a straight line. And that’s hard to do, with the fog rolling in on us. Anyway, it’s up to us to try it. Let’s go!”

 Prev. P 5/172 next