mournful wind wailed through the
gorge.

With an effort he forced himself to think. He had provisions for only a
day or two; one of the prospectors was obviously an expert mountaineer,
which led Prescott to believe that they would travel faster than he was
capable of doing. It would be the height of rashness to push on farther
into the wilds without a guide, and the first fall of snow would blot out
any trail the others might have left. Reason warned him that he must turn
back; but it was unthinkable that he should descend the gully. He
determined to climb the ravine on the morrow.

Growing cold, he fell to work with the ax, and soon had a fire burning in
a hollow among the rocks.

CHAPTER XVIII

DEFEAT

The next morning Prescott awakened in the dark and set to work,
shivering, to rekindle his fire. Day broke with a transitory brightness
while he had breakfast and soon afterward he entered the ravine. It was
steep, and filled with ice in places, but freshly dislodged stones and
scratches on the rocks showed him that the prospectors had gone that way.
The ascent was difficult: it cost him a tense effort now and then to gain
a slippery ledge or to scramble up a slab, and he had frequently to stop
and consider how he could best force a passage.

He was tired and damp with perspiration when he reached the top and met
an icy wind that swept across a tableland. The high plain was strewn with
rocky fragments, the peaks above were lost in vapor, but he saw by a
glance at the watery sun that it ran roughly west; and footprints led
across it with an inclination toward the south. This was comforting,
because the line of track ran to the south, and if he could strike that,
it would serve as a guide; moreover it confirmed Prescott's conclusion
that Kermode, who had evidently found the mineral vein worthless, would
hold on toward the sea. He was not the man to haunt familiar ground when
a wide, newly opened country lay before him.

Then a few stinging flakes struck Prescott's face, the pale sunshine was
blotted out, and a savage blast drove him back to the shelter of the
ravine. For an hour he sat, shivering, among the rocks while the gorge
was swept by snow. When it ceased he came out; but there was no sign of a
footprint now and, to make things worse, the new snow was soft. But he
plodded through it, heading southwest, so as to strike the track again, a
little farther on.

He spent the day on the high ground; at t