“You’ll have to do better than that to keep me from crossing,” said Wayland.

The fellow was aiming his rifle.  Wayland and Matthews jumped behind the big hemlocks.

“He’s fulling a skin bag wi’ water.”

“Then, they intend to cross the Desert,” inferred Wayland; “but they’ll have to go farther to slip me.”

One of the riders was scanning back with a field glass.

“Looking for number six—­Of all the colossal effrontery—­they are actually going to speak.”

The fellow nearest shore lowered his rifle and trumpeted both hands.

“Speak louder—­can’t hear ye.”  Matthews had gone to the edge of the lake.  The answer came faint and muffled.

“Where’s—­our—­pardner—?”

“Hold up y’r hands—­all five,” roared back Matthews.

The arms of all but the hurt man went above heads, hands facing.

“Y’ll find y’r man’s carcass in the bloody mess where ye sent the sheep—! d’ y’—­see yon eagle?—­’Tis pickin’ his bones—­” roared Matthews through funnelled palms; and both jumped back to the shelter of the hemlocks.  The outlaws drew together to confer.

“They don’t believe us,” said Wayland.  “They’ll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait.  All right, my friends!  You’ll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft.  We can’t cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can’t cross the upper end for the ice; and it’s too cold to risk swimming.”

Matthews had headed the horses and pack mule back from an open glade and hobbled their fore feet.  Then Wayland began chopping down small trees.  They saw the figures of the outlaws against the twilight of the gap ride away from the far margin of the lake.  Then only did the Ranger build a little fire behind the biggest hemlocks, an Indian’s tiny chip fire, not “the big white-man’s blaze.”  On this, they cooked their supper, lake trout hauled out while they waited, and flap jacks, with a tin plate for a frying pan.

“Anyway,” said the Ranger wiping the smoke tears from his eyes, “the smoke keeps off the mosquitoes.”

“Mosquitoes, pah!  That shows y’re Yale for all y’r good work this day!  A have no seen one yet.”

Wayland’s answer was to light his pipe.  “It’s either bear’s grease, or smoke between bites,” he laughed.

They had unsaddled horses and were sitting on a log watching the animals crop through the deep grasses.

The frontiersman uttered a sigh. “’Tis like a taste of the good old days, the days well nigh gone for ever; the smell of the bark fire; an’ th’ tang of the kinnikinick; an’ the cinnamon cedars; and the air like champagne; an’ the stars prickin’ the crown o’ the hoary old peaks like diamonds; an’ the little waves lappin’ an’ lavin’ an’ whisperin’ an’ tellin’ of the woman y’ luve.  An’ care?  Care, man?  There wasna’ a