THE PROSPECTOR 23

green kids and one old man, from Washington.
We had roughed it in East and West Kootenay
and were working south to leave the country
dead broke. We had found “ float’’ in plenty,
and had followed it up ridges and over divides
across three ranges of mountains. Our horses
were plumb played out. We had camped on
a ridge to let them fatten up enough to beat
it out of British Columbia for ever. Well, we
found some galena “floats” in a dry gully on
the other side of the valley. We had provi-
sions left for only eleven days. Some of the
boys said they would go out and shoot enough al
deer to last us for meat till we could get out |
of the country. Old Sandy and I thought we |
would try our luck for just one day. We fol-
lowed that ‘‘float’”’ clear across the valley. We
found more up the bed of a raging mountain
torrent ; but the trouble was that the stream
came over a rock sheer as the wall of a house.
I was afraid we ’d lose the direction if we left
the stream bed, but I could see high up the
precipice where it widened out in a bench.
You couldn’t reach it from below, but vou
could from above, so we blazed the trees below
to keep our direction and started up round
the hog’s back to drop to the bank under.
By now it was nightfall, and we hadn’t had

SADE EN GREER SI a