Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/94

 back to the night at Two Ocean Pass. This in turn awakened a host of half forgotten memories of the Land of Many Rivers. His feet followed the trend of his mind, and he found himself climbing the first range of the mountains. At first he traveled without definite purpose, but the desire to revisit these places gradually shaped in his brain.

The spicy smell of balsam and silver spruce lured him on, and he came to the first straggling groups of limber pine. When he entered the heavy lodge-pole growth he encountered many drifts of snow. Half a mile of climbing and he struck the solid, hard-packed drifts of the dense spruce slopes. Then he angled along the face of the range toward a pass that led across it.

The jar of hoofs, creaking of saddles, and the drone of voices reached him from below, and he stopped to listen. It was not often that men rode at night. The horses breathed heavily as they bucked the drifts. Then all sounds ceased but the undertone of voices. When the horses started again they went back down the way they had come, and Flash heard the crunch of snow as three men climbed toward him on foot.

The spring sunshine had packed the snow until