and exhaustion, for Alton had traced the last stages of his journey backwards through the snow, and the grim story of human endurance and anguish was plainly legible.  Here Jimmy had fallen, there lain still, and then dragged himself forward before he rose again, while the uneven footsteps had borne their own testimony.  Also the bag of specimens was heavy, and Alton decided that for a man in the last stages of exhaustion, the river had furnished the only road.  The silver was therefore somewhere up the Valley, and as it was winter when Jimmy found it, it would lie low down where the snow was cut off by the pines.  Alton lay still a minute with a curious glint in his eyes when the firelight touched them which was a tribute to the dead man, and then filled his pipe again.

His journey had been marked by petty misfortunes, each of which might become a more serious one, hitherto, and he was now alone.  This might be due to coincidence, but Alton, admitting that hypothesis, proceeded to consider an alternative one which resolved itself into two.  It was generally known in Somasco that he and Jimmy had held the clue to a secret that might be valuable, and strange prospectors for timber rights and minerals occasionally strayed into the valley.  Alton knew that most of the bushmen and free prospectors had a standard of honour which was somewhat higher than that usually lived up to in the cities.  They were quiet, fearless, free-handed men, the antitype of the roystering desperadoes he had now and then seen them depicted as by those who did not know them.  There were, he, however, knew, among them a few who it was probable had their own reasons for vacating the great Republic, and these were men of distinctly different calibre.  One or more of them, it seemed, might have heard of his aspirations and be following him.  If so, it was evident that he would be in security until he found the silver.  Then the peril would begin.

This led to the second issue.  Alton was quite aware that he had an enemy whom he had got the better of on several occasions hitherto.  Partly because devious finesse is not always superior to shrewd sense and fearless honesty, he had as yet held his own against Hallam of the Tyee.  Both knew that a time of prosperity was approaching for Somasco, and had decided more or less correctly that it would lead to affluence the man who had control of the valley; but while Alton had striven with arduous toil to bring about this consummation, Hallam of the Tyee was waiting while those he meant to plunder worked for him.  It was also plain that there was no room for two leaders with divergent aspirations, and the rancher had seen sufficient of his opponent’s dealings to recognize that he would not scruple about any measures which promised to rid him of a rival.  Therefore it became him to be careful, and once more his fingers fell upon the rifle.