With each of them picking his own way, they rattled down steep slopes and came upon tiny creeks, cold, brown from the dye of fallen autumn leaves. They clambered up slopes that seemed far steeper because of the extra strain they put upon their hearts and muscles. Dense growths of chaparral occasionally confronted them and made them make detours, despite their firm resolve to keep to the straight and narrow way. But in half an hour after sighting the thin stream of smoke they came out in an open space on a hillside and saw the tall fir which was their goal.

They crossed to it on level land, to look down a more precipitous slope than they had before encountered. And down there far below them they saw the misty gleam of cabin lights as they struggled with the night[6] and the increasing obstinacy of the fog that marched in from the sea.

[6]

“Here’s a sort of trail, Doctor,” announced Andrew Jerome. “And it looks to be leading straight toward those lights. Shall we try it?”

“Sure,” replied the doctor. “By all means. You’re the better mountaineer, Andy—take the lead. We can get a shakedown on the floor of the man who made those lights, I guess, and get set on the right trail to-morrow morning.”

It was dark now, and the insweeping fog added to the density of the surrounding gloom. Far to their left coyotes lifted their mocking, plaintive yodel to the Goddess of Darkness, their patron saint, who shielded their stealthy deviltry from the eyes of men. But the blurred lights beckoned the wanderers downward, and they obeyed the signal, slipping over rounded stones, staggering into prickly bushes, sliding over abrupt ledges.

Andrew Jerome followed the trail by instinct, and Dr. Shonto was glad to follow Andy. The youth’s aptitude in the mountains was ever a source of wonder for the doctor, and often he had told the boy that he attributed it to heredity. For on his mother’s side of the family Andy’s ancestors had been of Alpine Swiss stock, by name Zanini. Dr. Inman Shonto was a firm believer in heredity, anyway, and his young friend’s dexterous mountaineering presented a sound basis for his theorizing.

They came out eventually on level land, heavily timbered with pines. Straight through the pines the trail[7] led them, and soon they were confronted by a set of bars. Beyond the bars the fog-screened lights still invited them, so the doctor lifted his voice and called.

[7]

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