"Uncle Jake has stayed there a lot in the winter all alone, you must remember. He was telling me about it not long ago, how the----" Above the cabin, through the roaring and soughing of the wind among the spruce, came the long drawn yelling, harassed, pitiful cry of a coyote. From the canon the cry was answered. Again and again the two human-like voices wailed despairingly at each other while the boys involuntarily drew nearer together and Ross laid a caressing hand on the gun and finished his speech: "That's exactly what Uncle Jake told me--how the coyotes and wolves prowled around, and he didn't mind them nor the loneliness at all." Leslie nodded. "I noticed that he didn't seem to mind your being away in the same way I did. He just took to his pipe and his bunk and seemed settled for a rest until you got back again. That didn't add any to my restfulness, I can tell you, for what could I do up in the tunnel without him? I rustled around a bit trying to decide what to do when the door opened and there was Miller again, or Weston rather. I was as surprised as they make 'em until he said: "'Say, young feller, Doc he sent me back t' round up a book on medicine that he may need. It'll be layin' round loose som'ers, maybe in that hair covered chist of hisn.'" Leslie went on to say that when he had opened Ross's emergency chest Weston professed to have forgotten the name of the book he had been directed to fetch, and, consequently, had taken all the books, stuffing them carelessly into his game pouch. Then the storm had again swallowed him up. "After he went away," said Leslie, "I got to thinking pretty strongly about the dynamite. If it was so easy for one man to get into the valley from the land only knew where, why couldn't the McKenzies make their way back and spirit the dynamite off for good and all? We'd gone and touched off that charge under Soapweed Ledge to make 'em understand that we had it again, you know." "Yes, I know!" affirmed Ross grimly. "Geese that we were!"