CHAPTER 5

There was more snow on this side, and to travel through it he soon found that he must put on the snowshoes again; but after that the descent was actually restful compared with the labors of the climb.  Yonder was the dark streak of the timberline again.  Far down the valley he watched it curving in and out along the mountainside like a water level.  Below was the darkness of the forest where other things lived, and where Bull could live more easily, also.  Never had trees seemed such beautiful and friendly things to him.

Once a thought stopped him completely.  He was in a new world.  He was seeing everything for the first time.  On other days he had gone out with others.  Under their guidance, not trusted to undertake an expedition by himself, he looked at nothing until it was pointed out to him, heard nothing that was not first called to his attention.  He had always wondered at the acuteness of the senses of all other men.  But now, looking on the mountains for himself, he decided, with a start of the heart, that they were beautiful—­beautiful and terrible at once, with the reality that he had never found in his books.  What leveled spear of a knight, in the pages of romance, could equal the invisible thrust of this wind?

He reached the timberline.  Looking back, he saw the summit, a brilliant line of white against a blue sky.  Again the heart of Bull Hunter leaped.  Here was a great treasure that he had taken in with one grasp of the eyes and which he could never lose!

He turned down the valley.  Where it swerved out into the lower plain, stood Johnstown, and there he was to cross the flight of Pete Reeve, if Pete were indeed flying.  But it was incredible that the man who had struck down Uncle Bill Campbell should flee from any man or number of men.

He had reached the bottom of the narrow valley.  A dull noise came down to him from the mountain in the lull of the wind.  He looked up.

Far away, miles and miles, near the summit of Scalped Mountain, a snaky form of mist was twisting swiftly down.  He looked curiously.  The thing grew, traveling with great speed that increased with every moment.  It increased—­it gained velocity—­a snowslide!

He watched it in doubt.  It was twisting like a snake down the farther side of the mountain, but, in his experience, slides were as treacherous as serpents.  Bull started hastily for a low cliff that stood up from the floor of the valley, clear of the trees.

He had not gone far when the wind fell away to a whisper, and a dull roaring caught his ear.  He looked back over his shoulder in alarm.  A great wall of white was shooting down the mountainside.  The little slide of surface snow, which had twisted across the surface of the old snows of the winter, had been gaining in weight, in momentum, picking up claws of shrubbery, teeth of stone, and eating through layer after layer of the old snow, packed hard as ice.  Now it was a roaring mass with a front steadily increasing in height, and far away in the rear it tossed up a tail of snow dust, a flying mist that gave Bull an impression of speed greater than the main wall of the snow itself.