Chapter 17

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

After the roar of the passing avalanche had ceased, and the awed silence became oppressive, Stacy Brown’s voice was heard.

“Ow-wow!” he wailed.

“Are we all here, and safe?” called Tad. “Professor, Ned, Walter, Anvik!”

Each answered to his name.

“You didn’t call for me,” Chunky protested indignantly. “Don’t I count in this outfit?”

“That’s easy,” answered Tad. “When you’re not making a noise we know you’re somewhere else. Let’s see what the ice did to our camp.”

“Heap one piece ice fall,” grunted the guide. “Him sit on fire. Innua him mad, by jink!”

“Is Innua the scoundrel who has been throwing sections of mountains at us?” demanded Walter.

“He means the mountain spirit,” explained Tad. “Don’t you recall that Anvik wouldn’t start out with us the first day because he said the mountain spirit was in a blue funk, or something of the sort?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Old Innua must have been in a rage to-night then, and we are lucky that we weren’t in range of his projectiles,” chuckled Tad.

Beyond destroying their fire, no damage had been done to the camp. However, after the excitement no one felt like sleep, so the boys sat about the fire discussing the ice avalanche for an hour or more. Then, at the Professor’s urgent insistence, they turned in. Anvik long since had wound himself up in his blanket and gone to sleep.

Just as the dawn was graying, Tad got up, and shouldering his rifle slipped from the camp unobserved by anyone except the Indian. Anvik opened one eye, regarded the boy inquiringly, then closing the eye, dozed off. He was by this time too well used to Tad’s morning excursions to ask any questions. He knew the boy was well able to take care of himself.

Tad had a two-fold purpose in view in going out this morning. He wanted to get some fresh meat for the outfit and he also was curious to know what the smoke of the previous evening had meant. While he did not expect to come up with any strangers, he thought that, perhaps he might discover something.

Tad did. He had proceeded less than a mile from camp when he smelled smoke. At first he thought the odor must come from his own camp, then he saw that the slight breeze was from the opposite direction.

“That means that someone isn’t far ahead of me. It means I am going to find out who it is if I can.”

After floundering about for fully half an hour, with the odor of smoke becoming more pungent all the time, the boy was on the point of confessing that he was beaten, when all at once he caught the sound of a human voice. The voice was not loud enough to enable him to distinguish the words, but he was quite sure it was the voice of a white man and not far away at that.

“They have masked their camp. That’s why I haven’t been able to find them,” muttered the boy, starting ahead again. After creeping forward cautiously for some time, a wave of suffocating smoke from burning wood smote him full in the face.

Tad uttered a loud sneeze. Two men suddenly appeared in the haze of smoke, and the boy heard the sound of hands slapping pistol holsters. He was able to make the men out faintly, but not with sufficient clearness to see who or what they were.

“Hold on, boys–don’t shoot!” warned Butler, as he stepped around the smudge to enable him to get a better view of the men whom he had come upon so unexpectedly, to them.

Before him stood Curtis Darwood and Dill Bruce, the latter known among his companions as the Pickle. Each man held his revolver ready for quick action.

“Why, how do you do?” smiled Tad. “I hadn’t the least idea I should find anyone I knew.”

“Well, suffering blue jays, if it isn’t old Spotted Face!” exclaimed Bruce. “Howdy?”

“Very good. How are you?” Tad stepped forward. Bruce shook hands cordially with the boy. Tad turned to Darwood, who had not said a word. The latter’s face darkened, and he appeared not to have observed the hand that Tad extended toward him.

“Aren’t you going to shake hands with me, Mr. Darwood?” asked the lad.

“I reckon you ought to know better than to ask it,” returned the gold digger. “I reckon, further, that if you know what’s good for you you’ll be mushing out of this as fast as your legs will carry you, unless you are looking for trouble. Git!”