The Tenderfoots

WITH the threat of the snow slides definitely removed, the routine of ore-digging was resumed. Deeper and deeper the tunnel was driven into the mountain, and each day saw the accumulation of ore and broken rock on the dump grow in proportion. Nothing was said by any one of the three about Garth's night raid on the whiskey bottle; but Philip's attitude toward the big miner was stiffer for the lapse -- as Bromley's was gentler. Since there was no more liquor in the stores, there were no more lapses; and no fault could be found with the way Garth spent himself in the drilling and shovelling, the ore-carrying and sorting.

After a fortnight of bright sunshine in January, with a thaw that merely compacted the surface of the great snow blanket without perceptibly thinning it, the cold weather came again; there were night temperatures that made the green logs of the cabin walls crack and snap with sounds like pistol shots, and the clay chinkings became broad lines of hoar frost -- this though the fire on the hearth was never allowed to die down. With an ample supply of fuel they suffered little from the cold; but by the middle of February the provisions were running very low. Bromley's turn at the cooking came in the final week of the month, and it was he who found the bottom of their last sack of potatoes.