King's first interest was centred on the ground underfoot. He went back
and forth and about the ruin of the cabin several times seeking any
sign that would tell him if Brodie and Andy Parker had been here before
him. But there were no tracks in the softer soil, no trodden-down grass.
It was very likely that no foot had come here since King's own last
October. A look of satisfaction shone for an instant in his eyes. Then,
done with this keen examination, they went with curious eagerness to the
more distant landscape. He passed through the storm-broken trees and to
the far rim of the flat, where he stood a long time staring frowningly
at one after another of the spires and ridges lifted against the sky,
probing into the mystery of the night still slumbering in the ravines.
Now his look had to do, in intent concentration, with a slope not five
hundred yards off; now with a blue-and-white summit toward which a man
might toil all day and all night before reaching.

He might have been the figure of the "Explorer," grim and hard and
determined; silent and solitary in a land of silence and solitude,
brooding over a region where "the trails run out and stop." Something
urged, something called, and his blood responded. About him rose the
voice of the endless leagues of pines in a hushed utterance which might
have been the whisper:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges--
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

He made sure that he had left no sign of his visit here, not so much as
a fallen crust of bread, caught up his pack and found the familiar way
down the cliffs, striking off toward the higher mountains and the high
pass through which he would travel to-night.