It was a week before the hunters returned, a long lonely week for Ross. Each morning he told himself hopefully that before night Leslie might return, but, to his increasing dismay, no Leslie came. "Can it be that an accident has happened to him, somewhere, alone, or has he changed his mind about coming and gone back home?" Ross asked himself this question as he stood at the mouth of the tunnel one morning staring in the direction of Soapweed Ledge. A heavy snowstorm had set in that morning, and in the afternoon the falling snow shrouded the Ledge in a white veil out of which the three men now emerged, moving slowly across the little valley. Their snow-shoes were on their feet, and in place of the light packs with which they had started their shoulders were bent under loads of venison. The McKenzies had returned. That evening Waymart appeared at Weimer's door with a goodly portion of meat, at which Ross looked dubiously. "You've given us so much already," he hesitated. Waymart interrupted. "Jerk it," he directed briefly. "Jerked meat makes a good stew when ye can't git no fresh meat." He turned sharply to Weimer in his bunk. "See here, Uncle Jake, have ye forgot how t' jerk venison?" Weimer crawled out of his bunk, scowling. "Vell, I haf nicht dat. I guess I jerk him so gud as anypody." "Get about it then!" retorted Waymart with rough kindness. "Here's a meat knife to shred it up with." He laid a large, sharp knife on the table, and cut Ross's thanks short by an abrupt departure. Weimer, grumbling at the interruption to his rest, cut the meat in long, thin strips, which, he told Ross, were to be nailed to the outside of the shack after the storm had passed. But in the morning, Ross, objecting to a process which brought the meat into contact with the dirty logs, stretched a cord between two trees, and over it, in the sunshine, folded the strips clothespin fashion, leaving them for the air to cure and dry. For two or three days the McKenzies did not visit their neighbors. Ross saw them outside their shack occasionally, and something in the air and attitudes spoke, even at that distance, of disagreement. One evening at six o'clock Weimer stumbled out of the tunnel alone and down the path, the darkness robbing the snow of its terrors. A few moments later, Ross, having laid the dry sticks in the drilled holes in the end wall of the tunnel, lighted the fuses, and, candle in hand, made for the mouth. He came out on Lon Weston sitting on a stump which projected above the dump. "Hello, Doc," greeted Lon Weston. "Hello, Weston." Ross was so astonished to see him there that he nearly forgot to count the explosions that just then thundered in the tunnel behind him. "One, two, three, four, five." That accounted for the five sticks.