"And then, of course, I was awfully interested in what he had to tell, and ask me to do. He told a clever lie, Ross. He said that you had brought down an elk with his gun and wanted me to come back with him and the sled you had made to help the McKenzies haul supplies, and help pack the venison over the mountains for our winter meat. It was all the more clever because I knew that meat was all we needed to make our winter's supplies good. The story hit Uncle Jake in the right spot, too. He hurried up dinner for us to be gone before the big snow came. Weston thought we could reach his cabin that night and make it back again to-morrow morning with the elk meat. He said it would be a pretty good pull for the three of us, but as there was a good crust we could make it with that sled. Why, Doc, there wasn't a suspicion of deceit in his manner. He said you had fixed his pard up all right and would leave some stuff for him, and so didn't need to stay any longer. So I went up to the tool house and got the sled out and we started----" "The gun," interrupted Ross. "Did you think of the gun?" "Not much I didn't! That was Weston. Just as we were starting off he turned back and said: "'See here, young feller. Doc said as how ye was t' bring his gun along and mebby he could bring down a mountain sheep as we come back. They is a lot of them animals over with us.'" So the two had turned back and Leslie strapped Ross's gun across his shoulders. He carried the ammunition. Weston insisted on taking all of it along as he and his partner had run short, and Ross had promised them a share of his! Then they had started out, and, screened by the veil of gently falling snow, entered on the same tortuous, winding, upward trail that Ross and Weston had taken a few days previously. "And all the way," Leslie continued, "whenever the trail let us walk together, he was telling me a long yarn about the day you and he had spent chasing that elk whose meat we were going after. I listened, Ross, with my mouth opened half the time, and wished a dozen times, if I did once, that I had been with you. "Well, as the afternoon passed, the storm became heavier, and part of the way we couldn't see a dozen feet before us, and finally I think Weston himself was uncertain of our way although he said he wasn't. It must have been about four o'clock when we came to the head of the ledge. Weston searched and groped along until he came to a tree where a rope was already tied. "'It's the one I used fer Doc and me,'" he explained and slung it over the cliff.