Pushing forward at the best speed that could be gotten out of the loaded pack animals, they traversed the windings of the valley with nerves on edge and muscles tensed, more than half expecting to find a struggle for re-possession awaiting them in the treasure gulch. At the last, when the more familiar landmarks began to appear, Philip drew his rifle from its holster under his leg and rode on ahead to reconnoitre, leaving Bromley to follow with the jacks. But in a few minutes he came galloping back, waving his gun in the air and shouting triumphantly. “All safe, just as we left it!” he announced as he rode up. And then, with a laugh that was the easing of many strains: “What a lot of bridges we cross before we come to them! Here we’ve been sweating blood for fear the claim had been jumped--or at least I have--and I don’t suppose there has been a living soul within miles of it since we left. Kick those canaries into action and let’s get along and make camp on the good old stamping ground.” VII THE autumn days were growing perceptibly shorter when the discoverers of the “Little Jean” lode began to make preparations to be snowed in for the winter in the western mountain fastnesses. By this time they had heard enough about the mountain winters to know what they were facing. With the first heavy snowfall blocking the passes they would be shut off from the world as completely as shipwrecked mariners on a desert island. But hardships which are still only anticipatory hold few terrors for the inexperienced; and with the comforting figures of the assays to inspire them, they thought more of the future spring and its promise than of the lonely and toilsome winter which must intervene. Since there was still sufficient grass in sheltered coves and forest glades to feed the stock, they postponed the journey which one of them would have to take to find winter quarters for the animals. The delay was partly prudential. Though each added day of non-interference was increasing their hope that their ruse at the shale slide had been completely successful in throwing their pursuers off the track, they had no reason to assume that the Neighbors party would turn back without making an exhaustive search for the new “rich diggings”; and Philip was cannily distrustful of the Neighbors purpose. “It may be just as you say: that they are merely hungry gold-chasers, breaking their necks to be the earliest stake-drivers in a new district; but then, again, they may not be,” was the way he phrased it for the less apprehensive Bromley. “If they happen to be the other sort--the lawless sort--well, with both of us here to stand up for our rights, they’d be five to our two. We can’t afford to make the odds five to one. I’d rather wait and take the horses and jacks over the range in a snow storm than to run the risk of losing our mine.” “Meaning that we needn’t lose it if we can muster two to their five?” said Bromley, grinning.