a shallow pool, and here he rode across, hardly wetting
the belly of the gelding. Then up the far slope he was
lost at once in a host of trees. They cut him off from
his landmark, the white cliff, but he kept on with a feel
for the right direction, until he came to a sudden clearing, and in the clearing was a cabin. It was apparently
just a one-room shanty with a shed leaning against it
from the rear. No doubt the shed was for the trapper's
horse. Also, an ancient buckboard stood with sagging
wheels near the cabin, and, if this were indeed the house
of Hank Rainer, he used that wagon to carry his pelts
to town. But Andrew was amazed at the sight of the
buckboard. He did not see how it could be used in the
first place, and in the second place he wondered how it
was ever drawn to that place through the forest and
over the rocks.
He had no time for further thought. In the open door of the cabin appeared a man so huge that he had to bend his head to look out, and Andrew's heart fell. It was not the slender, rawboned youth of whom Uncle Jasper had told him, but a hulking giant. And then he remembered that twenty years had passed since Uncle Jasper rode that way, and in twenty years the gaunt body might have filled out, the shock of bright-red hair of which Jasper spoke might well have been the original of the red flood which now covered the face and throat of the big man. Where his hat covered it from the sun the hair fairly flamed; where the beard and side whiskers had been reached it was a faded bronze. It was a magnificent beard, sweeping across the chest of the man, and Andrew wondered at it.
"Hello!" called the trapper. "Are you one of the boys on the trail? Well, I ain't seen anything. Been about six others here already."
