Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/184

 ried him. He’ll start off to investigate before long.” He called Flash inside and closed the door. “Just to keep him out of trouble,” he explained.

Flash read his purpose and whined uneasily, scratching at the door. He prowled along the wall, shoving his nose against the cracks where the chinking had dropped from between the logs as he tried to catch the scent of the outside world.

Moran had made use of a convenient arrangement of windfall logs some fifty yards from the cabin, thatching the sloping top with spruce bows and spreading over them the hide of the elk he had killed. An hour after dark he unrolled his blankets in this retreat and lay smoking his pipe and pondering over what the girl had told him. The fact of the men having been in this high country so early in the spring indicated that they might have wintered here. If this was the case they might even now be lingering in the hills—some band of hunted fugitives.

Inside the cabin Flash was waiting. At last the regular breathing of the girl announced to him that she slept. He reared up, placing his forepaws against the wall beside the door. The latch was but a beam, one end working on a wooden