to-morrow we may have one hell of a time. I prefer to have a few hours
of daylight ahead of us when we raise that _cache_. Things are apt to
tighten, and I don't like a rumpus in the dark. Just now I'm hungry. If
that stuff is there, it will keep. Come on to camp; our troubles are
either nearly over or just about to begin in earnest."

We followed the upland past the end of the Stone till we found a slope
that didn't require wings for descent. If Hicks or Gregory wondered at
our arrival from the opposite direction in which we should have
appeared, they didn't betray any unseemly curiosity. Supper and a
cigarette or two consumed the twilight hour, and when dark shut down we
took to our blankets and dozed through the night.

At daybreak we breakfasted. Without a word to any one MacRae picked up
his carbine and walked out of camp. I followed, equally silent. It was
barely a hundred yards to the ledge, and I caught myself wishing it were
a good deal farther--out of range of those watchful eyes. I couldn't
help wondering how it would feel to be potted at the moment of
discovery.

"I thought I'd leave them both behind, and let them take it out in
guessing," Mac explained, when we stood under the rock shelf upon which
we had looked down the evening before. "We're right under their noses,
so they won't do anything till the stuff's actually in sight."

He studied the face of the cliff for a minute. The ledge jutted out from
the towering wall approximately twenty feet above our heads, but it
could be reached by a series of jagged points and knobs; a sort of
natural stairway--though some of the steps were a long way apart.
Boulders of all shapes and sizes lay bedded in the soft earth where we