Once there came a momentary lull, and on the silence, far off—­so far it seemed hardly more than a human breath drifting with the lighter current that still set towards him from the loftier peak—­Tisdale heard some one calling him.  His pulses missed their beat and raced on at fever heat.  He believed, in that halting instant, it was Beatriz Weatherbee.  Then the gale, making up for the pause, swept down in fury, and he hurried under the shelter of the ridge with the child.  He told himself there had been no voice; it was an illusion.  That the catastrophe, following so closely on his illness, had unhinged him a little.  The Morganstein party had doubtless returned to Seattle at the beginning of the thaw; and even had Mrs. Weatherbee remained at Scenic Springs, it was not probable she had strayed far from the comfort and safety of the hotel.  And recalling that night she had passed in the Wenatchee mountains, he smiled.

As twilight fell, a ruddy illumination outlined the ridge.  He conjectured that the men he had heard early in the afternoon in the vicinity of the first slide were a party of belated hunters, who had camped in the upper canyon.  They must have known of the greater avalanche; possibly of the disaster.  They may have sent a messenger to the Springs and kindled this beacon to guide any one who might choose this way to bring the news from the portal.  At least they would be able to direct him to the shortest out; serve him the cup of coffee of which he was in need.  So, coming to the end of the ridge where the canyons met, he turned in the direction of the fire, and found—­two waiting women.

Their presence alone was an explanation.  Mrs. Feversham had only to say Lucky Banks had led their party, in the ascent of the peak that brilliant morning, and instantly everything was clear to Tisdale.  The voice he had heard from the top of the ridge was not an illusion.  She had called him.

“It was snowing,” he said, interrupting the story, “but if they left the shadow of a trail, Banks found it.  There are two of them, though, and up there—­it’s cold.”  Then, having gone a few steps, he remembered the child and came back to put him in Elizabeth’s arms.  “His father and mother are dead,” he explained briefly, “but he hasn’t a bruise.  When he wakes, he is going to be hungry.”

So, forgetting those wearing hours of rescue work, and without the coffee for which he had intended to ask, he started on the prospector’s trail.  In a little while, as he skirted the foot of the slide, he heard a great commotion on the slope beyond.  It was Lucky Banks easing his human toboggan down the last pitch to the canyon floor.

The two men stood a silent moment scanning each other in the uncertain light across that load.  Tisdale’s eyes were searching for an answer to the question he could not ask, but the prospector, breathing hard, was trying to cover the emotion Tisdale’s unexpected appearance had roused.