"There wasn't, eh? I don't suppose you ever thought that there's yet two months before we can clinch this thing for good, and young Folger might--I say might--have kicking about somewhere in his belongings the very document we've all of us been worrying about for twenty years." Simon cursed--a single, fiery oath. "I don't suppose you could have arranged for this Wegan to have had a hunting accident, could you? Who in the devil would have thought that yelping old hen could have ever done it--would have ever kept at it long enough to reach anybody to carry her message! But as usual, we are yelling before we're hurt. It isn't worth a cussword. Like as not, this Wegan will never take the trouble to hunt him up. And if he does--well, it's nothing to worry about, either. There is one back door that has been opened many times to let his people go through, and it may easily be opened again." Dave's eyes filled with admiration. Then he turned and gazed out through the window. Against the eastern sky, already wan and pale from the encroaching dawn, the long ridge of a mountain stood in vivid and startling silhouette. The edge of it was curiously jagged with many little upright points. There was only one person who would have been greatly amazed by that outline of the ridge; and the years and distance had obscured her long ago. This was a teacher at an orphanage in a distant city, who once had taken a crude drawing from the hands of a child. Here was the original at last. It was the same ridge, covered with pines, that little Bruce had drawn. IV The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him. He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve. Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town. A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three sides,--the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.