“I don’t know why it should turn up anything different.” “I suppose you don’t: no man has ever seen the back of his own neck--or the close limitations of his own rut. But the furrow is already started. You are not the man you were when we took to the tall hills last summer.” “Better, or worse?” “Let us say different. The man you are now would never go back to school-teaching in New Hampshire.” Philip nodded morosely. “I admitted that, a good while ago, if you’ll remember. But we were talking about Garth. What are we going to do with him after the winter is over? Pay him his wages and tell him to go?” “I have been thinking about that. It occurs to me that we already owe him more than wages. If you hadn’t met him on the way out with the ponies and brought him back with you----” “I know; you couldn’t have held out alone against the Neighbors gang very long; and if I had come back by myself, there might have been a different story to tell. When I made the bargain with Garth, he said all he’d ask would be a chance to locate a claim near ours.” “Anybody who gets here first can have that.” “That is what I told him. Never mind; we’ll see about his case when spring comes. I’ll agree if you think we ought to do something better than day-wages for him.” Further talk about Garth and his deserts was halted by the incoming of the man himself, empty-handed. “No good,” was his grumbling comment on the night deer stalking. “Reckon we don’t get us no more deer meat this winter. I like to got bogged down myself, gettin’ out to the water hole. There shore is one big heap o’ snow in this neck o’ woods, if you’ll listen at me. _And_ more a-comin’.” “Another storm?” said Philip. “Shore as you’re a foot high. And that makes me say what I does. I don’t like the looks o’ the way she’s pilin’ up on the spur back o’ this wickiup of ourn. The timber up there ain’t thick enough to hold ’er if she gets much heavier. There’s two ways it can slide; down to-wards the creek, ’r straight down thisaway. Here’s hopin’.” This was disturbing news. They had already seen one slide come down on the opposite, thinly wooded side of the gulch, and it had afforded an object-lesson as convincing as it was startling. Garth had had hair-raising stories to tell of prospectors’ cabins crushed and buried under thousands of tons of snow and débris, and their cabin site had been chosen wholly without reference to safety from this peril. “Can’t we do anything more than hope?” Philip asked, making room for the giant before the fire. “Could, maybe, if we had snow-shoes.” “How?” It was Bromley who wanted to know. “Shuffle up yonder and start the slide sideways with a blast. But we ain’t got the shoes; and there ain’t nobody goin’ to h’ist hisself up on that li’l’ hill without ’em. Yuh can bet your bottom dollar on that.”