"Devil a bit, but it feels as if we were scrambling along side-hills instead of going steadily downhill all the time, though I daresay it is only my fancy. I'm not used to going about with my eyes shut."
"And I am," said Steve bitterly. "That is just what I've been doing all my life, and now we shall both have to pay for it. We may as well sit down and die here, Ned. I cain't keep this farce up any longer. I'm clean turned round and have been all day;" and with a great weary sigh Steve Chance sank down upon a log and buried his head in his hands. He was utterly broken down, physically and mentally, by the difficulties of forest travel.
Even to the hunter these British Columbian forests are full of difficulties, but to a man like Steve they are more full of dangers than the angriest ocean. For an hour or two hours, or for half a day, a patient man may creep and crawl through brush and choking dead-fall, putting every obstacle aside with gentle temperate hand, and hoping for light and an open country; but even the most patient temper yields at last to the persistent buffets of every mean little bough, and the most enduring strength breaks down when dusk comes and finds the forest tangle growing thicker at every step.
To Steve Chance every twig which lashed him across the eyes, every log against which he struck his shins, had become a sentient personal enemy, whose silence and apathy only made his attacks the harder to bear, until before the multitude of his enemies and the darkness of the trackless woods, the young Yankee's strength and courage failed him, and he sat down ready if need be to die, but too thoroughly exhausted to make another effort for life. Had there been a ray of hope to cheer him he would have kept on, but a day's wandering in the dark labyrinths of a mountain forest, where the winds have built up barriers of fallen pines, and where the young trees rise in dark green billows above the bodies of their unburied predecessors, is enough to kill hope in the most buoyant heart.
"Don't throw up the sponge, Steve," said a voice at his elbow. "We'll reach the Frazer yet."
The speaker was blind, and though he had never opened his mouth to complain all through that weary day, be sure that the led man had borne many a shrewd buffet which his leader had escaped. If the forest was dark to Steve, it was darker to blind Ned Corbett, but he at any rate was unbeaten still.
"I think that I shall be able to see a little to-morrow, Steve," he went on; "and I believe that I can put your head straight now."
"I don't see how even you can do that, Ned," replied Chance despondently.
"Don't you? Well, let's try. Are there any deer tracks near us?"
"Yes, here's an old one leading right past the log we are sitting on."