"A quarter of a million, Tom," laughed Will. "You're getting avaricious as we go on. You raised it to a half million and now you make it a million." "It does look ez ef my fancy grew more heated the nearer we come to the gold. I do hev big expectations fur a feller that never found a speck of it. How that wind does howl! Do you think, young William, that a glacier is comin' right squar' down on us?" "No, Tom. Glaciers, like tortoises, move slowly. We'll have time to get out of the way of any glacier. It's easy to outrun the fastest one on the globe." "I've heard tell that the earth was mostly covered with 'em once. Is that so?" "They say there was an Ice Age fifty thousand or so years ago, when everything that lived had to huddle along the equator. I don't vouch for it. I'm merely telling what the scholars tell." "I'll take your word for it, young William, an' all the same I'm glad I didn't live then. Think o' bein' froze to death all your life. Ez it is I'm ez cold ez I keer to be, layin' here right now in this canyon." "If we were not hunting for gold," said Brady, "I'd try to climb to the top of this mountain. I take it to be close on to fourteen thousand feet in height and I often feel the ambition of the explorer. Perhaps that's why I've been willing to search so long and in vain for the great beaver horde. I find so many interesting things by the way, lakes, rivers, mountains, valleys, game, hot springs, noble forests and many other things that help to make up a splendid world. It's worth while for a man like me, without any ties, just to wander up and down the face of the earth." "Do you know anything about the country beyond the White Dome?" asked Will. "Very little, except that it slopes down rapidly to a much lower range of mountains, mostly forested, then to hills, forested also, and after that we have the great plains again." "Now you've talked enough, young William," said the Little Giant. "It's time for you to sleep, but ez this is goin' to be a mighty cold night up here, fifteen or twenty miles 'bove the clouds, I reckon we'd better git blankets, an' wrap up the hosses an' mules too." Having enough to go around they tied one blanket around the body of every animal, and Will was the most proficient in the task. "It's 'cause they help him an' they don't help us," said the Little Giant. "Seein' that you've got such a touch with animals we're goin' to use you the next time we meet a grizzly bear. 'Stead o' wastin' bullets on him an' runnin' the chance o' some o' us gittin' hurt, we'll jest send you forrard to talk to him an' say, 'Ephraim! Old Eph, kindly move out o' the path. You're obstructin' some good men an' scarin' some good hosses an' mules.' Then he'll go right away."