"What are you up to now?" "Just going to take a pike at some mountain freak on the other side of the gully." "Wait a minute, young man; I'll come and see what you have started." Roque carried a big bump of curiosity under his cap. In the meantime, Ansel had told Roten about the slope climbers, whatever they were, and the aviation leader concluded that any sort of investigation on this trip required his presence. The whole company, then, trailed after Billy across the plateau, with a general view of deciding in force the value of the alleged discovery. From the lookout point a battery of glasses were soon trained upon the slope designated by Billy and Ansel. Roten hit the moving mark first this time. "I'll be blest," he ejaculated, behind the steady aim of the binocle, "if it isn't one big man carrying another on his shoulders, and a shorter fellow bringing up the rear!" CHAPTER XIX. RABBIT'S FOOT FOR LUCK. FOR an hour the Russians in front of the rocky rise, where Schneider and Henri stood sentinel over the prostrate Austrian officer, had maintained an ominous silence. Not a shot had been fired in the mentioned time, and no opportunity had been afforded the champion stone roller to make another ten-strike in repulsing attack. "You can put it in your pipe and smoke it that this brooding over there means no good to us." While Henri was not addicted to the pipe, he accepted the figure of speech, and fully agreed with his companion that the calm had sinister portent. "The minute is about ripe," he volunteered, "for us to make ourselves scarce." That Schneider was in accord with the proposition had evidence in the action of removing his boots. To cross a cavity that lowered two hundred feet or more on the unstable and untried support of a fallen pine warranted every precaution. There could be no crawling for the venturesome bricktop. He had human freight to carry on his back. "Sorry to disturb you, captain," he apologized to the invalid soldier, "but it has to be done." Henri, keeping watch at the front, sounded a note of alarm: "Quick! I see what they're doing--it's a spread, and a three-cornered charge--they've stolen to the bushes right and left, and the firing gang in the middle is prepared to pot us if we show head or hand!" Schneider bent to the task of lifting Schwimmer, the latter groaning at the movement. Henri, balanced by Schneider's boots thonged over one shoulder and the knapsack swinging from the other, made a dash for the slender bridge. He had determined to first essay the perilous passage, and test the solidity required to bear the fourfold weight that would follow. A single misstep, and for the error maker there yawned a pit of death, a mangling on jagged rocks lashed by the ice-laden rush of a brawling mountain stream.