"You are using almost the same words as Moyese. He says the public doesn't care a damn, wouldn't raise a hand to stand for the rights of one of us, pays us less than dagoes earn. I guess Moyese doesn't understand our point of view, can't take in why we keep at it." The wind came through the trees a phantom harper. The little waves lapped and whispered. The pine needles clicked pixy castanets; and the moon beams sifted through the trees a silver dust. "Why do you? Why do you keep on the job?" asked the old man. "Hanged if I know," answered Wayland uncomfortably. "A saw a man on the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk. If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he'd be given a V. C. accordin' to the Turk, and a title and a pension for life." "I don't despair of a cross myself, when Moyese hears what happened to-day. It'll be a double cross with a G. B.; but, speaking of cross, as we have to cross the lake, don't you think you'd better snatch a little sleep?" And so the two men, one representing the chivalry of the old West, the other the chivalry of the new, stretched out to sleep with coats for pillows, while the flood-waters went singing through the stones, and the little waves came lipping and whispering, and the low boom of the snow slides rolled through the chambered hollows of canyon and gorge. Absurd, wasn't it, but the Ranger was not dreaming about the bevelling trowel of the titan mountain gods? He went to sleep dreaming of the star visible from the other side of the Holy Cross, dreaming dreams that men and women have dreamed since time began; of drinking, drinking, and drinking yet again, of life and love and blessedness from the fount of human lips; of the seal that should be the seal to service, not to self; of the gates ajar to a new life like the notch of sky where the rocks of the Pass opened portals to the blue valley. Would he have dreamed less joyously if he had known that the portals of the Pass led to the avalanche and the desert and the alkali death? Who shall say that love did not pay the toll? And in him rioted the savagery of the fighter who wanted to seize his foe by the throat. CHAPTER XIV ON THE GAME TRAIL The dull boom of a snow-cornice tumbling over some high cliff on the far side of the lake awakened the Ranger to the chill darkness of mountain night just before dawn. The moon had sunk behind the sky-line of the peaks; and the little lake laving among the reeds lay inky in the shadow of the heavy mist.