“Come wan, come all,” Tom retorted. “Sure, I wouldn’t object to a bit of a fight, for a change, man to man. But fightin’ these mountains is up-hill work.” And he laughed at his joke.
“Well, I hope with all my heart the cap’n’s struck the right trail,” said Sergeant Meek. “And he’s pretty certain, or he wouldn’t have said so much. He’s no man to make a brag, as you know. For the first time since we entered the mountains he’s looking sort o’ content. He deserves a turn o’ luck. ’Tis always of his country he’s thinking, and of us, and never of himself; and though in matter of muscle he’s the smallest man amongst us, he picks the hardest jobs.”
In the morning the snow was falling faster than ever. They all were anxious to reach the river, but the pass was so clogged with drifts and their horses were so weak that the march took them only out to the edge of the bottom-land.
It was the fifth day without sight of game. The lieutenant ordered a hunt, before dark; but not even a rabbit was found. There was nothing but snow, snow, snow.
“My belt’s twice around me already, an’ is startin’ on the third lap,” declared Alex Roy.
However, the horses were in luck, at last—and they needed it. John Sparks and Tom Dougherty reported a fine big patch of long grass down near the river. In the morning the lieutenant sent Baroney and Stub, with the wretched animals, to set them to grazing and herd them—and a long cold task this proved to be.
Still, as Baroney said, as he and Stub trudged about or squatted with their backs to the squalls:
“If we cannot eat, ourselves, it is a great pleasure to watch the horses eat; hein?”
Late in the afternoon Corporal Jerry Jackson came down.
“You’re to fetch the horses in with you, at dusk,” he said. “Never a trace of game, all day, so we’ll pull out in the mornin’.”