Allie was waiting for him at the brook ford.

“Oh, it was gone!” she cried.

“Allie, I couldn’t find the place.  Come, ride back and let me walk beside you....  We’ll have fun telling Larry and Slingerland.”

“Neale, let me tell them,” she begged.

“Go ahead.  Make a strong story.  Larry always had leanings toward gold-strikes.”

And that night, after supper, when the log fire had begun to blaze, and all were comfortable before it, Allie glanced demurely at Larry and said: 

“Reddy, if you had known that I was heiress to great wealth, would you have proposed to me?”

Slingerland roared.  Larry seemed utterly stricken.

“Wealth!” he echoed, feebly.

“Yes.  Gold!  Lots of gold!”

Slingerland’s merry face suddenly grew curious and earnest.

Larry struggled with his discomfiture.

“I reckon I’d done thet anyhow—­without knowin’ you was rich—­if it hadn’t been fer this heah U. P. surveyor fellar.”

And then the joke was on Allie, as her blushes proved.  Neale came to her rescue and told the story of Horn’s buried gold, and of his own search that day for the place.

“Shore I’ll find it,” declared Larry.  “We’ll go to-morrow....”

Slingerland stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“If thar’s gold been buried thar it’s sure an’ certain thar yet,” he said.  “But I’m afraid we won’t git thar tomorrow.”

“Why not?  Surely you or Larry can find the place?”

“Listen.”

Neale listened while he was watching Allie’s parted lips and speaking eyes.  A low, whining wind swept through the trees and over the roof of the cabin.

“Thet wind says snow,” declared the trapper.

Neale went outside.  The wind struck him cold and keen, with a sharp edge to it.  The stars showed pale and dim through hazy atmosphere.  Assuredly there was a storm brewing.  Neale returned to the fire, shivering and holding his palms to the heat.

“Cold, you bet, with the wind rising,” he said.  “But, Slingerland, suppose it does snow.  Can’t we go, anyhow?”

“It ain’t likely.  You see, it snows up hyar.  Mebbe we’ll be snowed in fer a spell.  An’ thet valley is open down thar.  In deep snow what could we find?  We’ll wait an’ see.”

On the morrow a storm raged and all was dim through a ghostly, whirling pall.  The season of drifting snow had come, and Neale’s winter work had begun.

Five miles by short cut over the ridges curved the long survey over which Neale must keep watch; and the going and coming were Neale’s hardest toil.  It was laborsome to trudge up and down in soft snow.

That first snow of winter, however, did not last long, except in the sheltered places.  Fortunately for Neale, almost all of his section of the survey ran over open ground.  But this fact augured seriously for his task when the dry and powdery snow of midwinter began to fall and sweep before the wind and drift over the lee side of the ridge.