al hundred feet above the base lie the group of gold-mines behind
the mountain, and a short railroad spur blasted across the southern
face runs to them from Glen Tarn. Below, the mountain wall breaks in
long steps almost vertically to the base, toward which Glover's party
was heading.

The move made new dispositions necessary. Orders flew from Bucks like
curlews, for it was more essential than ever to open the hill speedily.

The private car was run across the Hog's Back, and the news sent to the
rotary crew with injunctions to push with all effort as far at least as
the mine switch, that help might be sent out on the spur to meet the
party on the climb.

The increased activity apparent far up and down the mountain as the
word went round, the bringing up of the last reserve engines for the
hill battery, the effort to get into communication by telegraph with
the mine hospital and Glen Tarn Springs, the feverish haste of the
officials in the car to make the new dispositions, all indicated to
Gertrude the approach of a crisis--the imminence of a supreme effort to
save one life if the endeavor enlisted the men and resources of the
whole division. New gangs of shovellers strung on flat-cars were being
pushed forward. Down the hill, spent and disabled engines were
returning from the front, and while they took sidings, fresh engines,
close-coupled, steamed slowly like leviathans past them up the hill.

The moment the track was clear, the private car was backed again down
the ridge. Following the serpentine winding of the right of way, the
general manager was able to run the car far around the mountain, and it
stopped opposite the southern face, which rose across the broad canyon.
When the party in the car got their glasses fixed, the little company
beyond the gulf had begun their climb and were strung like marionettes
up the base of Pilot.

The south face of the mountain, sheer for nearly a thousand feet, is
broken by narrow ledges that make an ascent possible, and not until the
peak passes the timber does snow ordinarily find lodgment upon that
side. Swept by the winds from the Spanish Sinks, the vertical reaches
above the base usually offer no obstruction to a rapid climb, though
except perhaps by early prospectors, the arete had never been scaled.
Glover, however, in locating, had covered every stretch of the mountain
on each of its sides, and Dancing's poles and brackets, like
banderillas stung into the tough hi