ner so, fer the rabbit’s maybe got a hole he can duck inty an’ they have nawthin’ but the summer camp they’ve made, an’ hammicks, by gorry, whin they should have warrm overshoes an’ sourdough coats!  Tenderfeet an’ pilgrims they be, an’ these mountains is no place fer such with winter comin’ on—­an’ like to be a bad wan the way the squrls has been layin’ away nuts.”

Pilgrims and tenderfeet they were, and their lack of foresight might well shock an oldtimer like Murphy.  But he would have been still more shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming winter another young tenderfoot had been making.  If he had seen the place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile of food which Jack referred to pridefully as his grubstake I don’t know what he would have done.

Under the barren, rock-upended peak of King Solomon there was a narrow cleft between two huge slabs that had slipped off the ledge when the mountain was in the making.  At the farther end of the cleft there was a cave the size of a country school-house, with a jagged opening in the roof at one side, and with a “back-door” opening that let one out into a network of clefts and caves.  It was cool and quiet in there when Jack discovered the hiding place, and the wind blowing directly from the south that day, did not more than whistle pleasantly through a big fissure somewhere in the roof.

Jack thought it must have been made to order, and hastened down to their meeting place and told Marion so.  And the very next day she insisted upon meeting him on the ridge beyond Toll-Gate basin and climbing with him to the cave.  As soon as she had breath enough to talk, she agreed with him as emphatically as her vocabulary and her flexible voice would permit.  Made to order?  She should say it was!  Why, it was perfect, and she was just as jealous of him as she could be.  Why, look at the view!  And the campfire smoke wouldn’t show but would drift away through all those caves; or if it did show, people would simply think that a new volcano had bursted loose, and they would be afraid to climb the peak for fear of getting caught in an eruption.  Even if they did come up, Jack could see them hours before they got there, and he could hide.  And anyway, they never would find his cave.  It was perfect, just like a moonshiner story or something.

Speaking of smoke reminded Jack that he would have to lay in a supply of wood, which was some distance below the rock crest.  Manzanita was the closest, and that was brushy stuff.  He also told Marion gravely that he must do it before any snow came, or his tracks would be a dead give-away to the place.  He must get all his grubstake in too, and after snowfall he would have to be mighty careful about making tracks around any place.