and shot our shells away long ago. We kill
things with rocks but it takes muscle, m'sieu, to throw hard enough. The
dog was starvin' and we killed and ate him. We couldn't try to get out
because mother wouldn't leave and she'd a been dead before we got back.
We couldn't have wallered through the snow anyhow. We'd never have made
it if we'd gone. There wasn't anything to do but to try and hang on till
spring; then we hoped somebody would come down like you have."

The boy did not cry as he told the story nor did his lip so much as
quiver at the recollection of their sufferings. He made no effort to
describe them, but the hollows in his cheeks and the dreadful thinness
of his arms and little body told it all more eloquently than words.

Kincaid noticed that he had not mentioned his father's name, so he asked
finally:

"Where's Dubois? Where's your father? I came to see him."

The childish face hardened instantly.

"I don't know. He cleaned up the sluice-boxes late last fall after the
first freeze. Mother helped him clean up. He got a lot of gold--the most
yet--and he took it with him and all the horses. He said he was going
out for grub but he never came back. Then the big snows came in the
mountains and we knew he couldn't get in. We ate our bacon up first,
then the flour give out, and the beans. The baby cried all the time
'cause 'twas hungry and Petie and me wore our shoes out huntin' through
the hills. It was awful, m'sieu."

Kincaid swallowed a lump in his throat.

"Do you think he'll come back?" the younger boy asked eagerly.

"He might have stayed outside longer than he intended and found he
couldn't get in for the snow, or he might have tried and froze in the
pass. It's deep there yet," was Kincaid's evasive reply.

"He'll never come back," said the older boy slowly, "and--he wasn't
froze in the pass."

It was still May when Dick Kincaid climbed out of the valley with the
whimpering squaw clinging to the horn of his saddle while the swarthy
little "breeds" trudged manfully in the trail close to his heels. The
violets still made purple blotches along the bank of the noisy stream,
the thorn trees and the service-berry bushes were still like fragrant
banks of snow, the grass in the valley was as green and the picture as
serenely beautiful as when first he had stopped to gaze upon it, but it
no longer looked like paradise to Dick Kincaid.

They stopped to rest and let the horses get their breath when they