stick for a day or two, and see what this country looks like?"

"Looks good to me," said Bruce.

He sat down as he spoke, with his back to a rock, and over his knee he
levelled a long brass telescope. From his saddle Langdon unslung a
binocular glass imported from Paris. The telescope was a relic of the Civil
War. Together, their shoulders touching as they steadied themselves against
the rock, they studied the rolling slopes and the green sides of the
mountains ahead of them.

They were in the Big Game country, and what Langdon called the Unknown. So
far as he and Bruce Otto could discover, no other white man had ever
preceded them. It was a country shut in by tremendous ranges, through which
it had taken them twenty days of sweating toil to make a hundred miles.

That afternoon they had crossed the summit of the Great Divide that split
the skies north and south, and through their glasses they were looking now
upon the first green slopes and wonderful peaks of the Firepan Mountains.
To the northward--and they had been travelling north--was the Skeena
River; on the west and south were the Babine range and waterways; eastward,
over the Divide, was the Driftwood, and still farther eastward the Ominica
range and the tributaries of the Finley. They had started from civilization
on the tenth day of May and this was the thirtieth of June.

As Langdon looked through his glasses he believed that at last they had
reached the bourne of their desires. For nearly two months they had worked
to get beyond the trails of men, and they had succeeded. There were no
hunters here. There were no prospectors. The valley ahead of them was
filled with golden promise, and as he sought out the first of its mystery