Chapter XXXII: Grenfell's Gift
It was snowing hard, and, though it was still two hours before sunset, the light was growing dim when Weston pulled the foremost pack-horse up on the edge of the gully. He and Devine had each a beast in his charge, and the freighter had started with two, but one of these had been left behind with a broken leg and a merciful bullet in its brain. That country is a difficult one, even to the Cayuse horses, which are used to its forest-choked valleys and perilous defiles.
In front of them a rugged peak rose above the high white ridge of Dead
Pine. They could see the latter cutting against a lowering sky some
twelve hundred feet above, though the peak showed only a ghostly shape
through its wrappings of drifting mist. In altitude alone the ridge
was difficult to reach, but, while that would not have troubled any of
the men greatly, the ascent was made more arduous by the fact that the
unmarked trail followed the slope of an awful gully. The latter fell
almost sheer from close beside their feet, running down into the
creeping obscurity out of which the hoarse thunder of a torrent rose. Here and there they could catch a glimpse of a ragged pine clinging far down among the stones, and that seemed only to emphasize the depth of the gloomy pit. On the other hand, the hillside rose like a slightly slanted wall, and the sharp stones of the talus lay thinly covered with snow between it and the gully.
The freighter glanced dubiously up the hollow.
"I've struck places that looked nicer; but we can't stop here and
freeze," he said. "We'll either have to take the back trail and camp
among that last clump of pines or get on a hustle and get up."
"I'm certainly not going back," said Weston. "We have come out to see
in just what time we can make the journey to the railroad over the new
trail. When we have done it, we'll try to spread the information to
everybody likely to find it interesting."
"You're not going to worry about how many horses you leave behind, I
suppose?"
"That," said Devine, with a little laugh, "is one of the facts they
never do mention in a report of the kind. We've lost only one so far, and two bags of rather high-grade ore."
"If you've one altogether when you fetch the head of this gully you'll
be blame lucky," said the freighter. "Give that beast a whack to start
him. Get up there!"
They went on, with the snow in their faces, and the stones they could
not see slipping beneath their feet; and the light grew dimmer as they
proceeded. A bitter wind swept down the gully and drove their wet
clothing against their chilled bodies, while the hillside, growing
steeper, pushed them nearer the brink of the awful hollow. The slope
of the latter, as far down as they could see, was apparently too steep
to afford a foothold, and every now and then there was a roar and a
rattle as the stones they dislodged plunged into the depths of it. Weston, plodding along behind the freighter, however, kept his eyes fixed for the most part on the face of the hill, for it seemed to him that the cost of changing that perilous passage into a reasonably safe trail would not be excessive.
When they had climbed for an hour, the snow grew thicker, and it
became evident that the light was dying out rapidly. The freighter
announced that he could scarcely see a dozen yards ahead, and Weston
could discern no more than the blurred shape of the horse that
floundered over the slippery stones a few paces in front of him. He
could, however, hear Devine encouraging the one he led, and
occasionally breaking out into hoarse expletives.
"It's gluey feet they want," said the latter, when they stopped for a
minute or two. "You can't expect horses to crawl up a wall."
"They've managed about half of it," Weston declared. "We could make
this quite an easy trail with a little grading. It's the only really
difficult spot."
"Well," said Devine, dryly, "I guess you could. In this country they
call any trail easy that you can crawl up on your hands and knees. Still, that little grading's going to cost you about two thousand dollars a mile."