Up, up, up, with Jenny digging in her toes, snorting and puffing and picking her way over the roughness of the worn rocks. Occasionally there was a brief level spot where one might stop and pant and rest. Indeed, this was a hard trail for anybody, man or beast, and Terry felt considerable sympathy for the laboring ox-teams and the straining horses that drew the jolting, groaning wagons.
The outfits descending seemed to have almost as difficult a time, for the wagons, their heavy brake-shoes smoking and their boughs dragged behind, enveloping them in dust, threatened to run over the teams.
But it was a stirring scene, although whether any of the people coming down were bringing gold could not be learned amidst such racket and confusion.
Part way up another friend was encountered. He was the wheel-barrow man, halted to breathe so as to be able to push his barrow to the next resting place.
"Tough sledding," he wheezed, as he sat upon his barrow handles and wiped his brow with a bandanna handkerchief. "Wust yet, but I'm bound to get there."
They left the wheel-barrow man behind. At every turn they expected to see the summit beyond, but the climb required over an hour and a half of steady work.
Here, on the top, they were high above Table Mountain.
"Whew!" gasped Harry. The top was flat, and they drew aside, while they rested. Everybody halted here to rest. It was a fine view. Down below, whence they had come, was the trail, with other outfits zig-zagging up; and farther was the trail along Clear Creek, and farther, the Platte River; and farther, the plains, and Cherry Creek, and Denver and Auraria, all wonderfully sharp in the perfectly transparent air. The people at the foot of the trail and beyond looked like pigmies, and the wagons like toys.
Before, the trail stretched across the mountain top and appeared to aim straight into a tremendous wild country of much higher mountains, timbered with evergreens and capped with snow.
The gold-seeker companies were again starting on.