“Are they armed?” Philip asked.
The horse-wrangler chuckled at the tenderfoot naïveté of the question.
“Folks don’t trail round much in this neck o’ woods without totin’ their artillery. Leastways, a hombre like Hank Neighbors don’t. Far as that goes, you-all seem to be pretty well heeled yourselves.”
“We’ll try to hold up our end of the log,” Philip boasted. Then: “If they’re chasing us, I guess we’d better be moving along. Much obliged for your trouble—till you’re better paid. Get hold of that canary’s halter, Harry, and we’ll pitch out.”
The river crossing was made in safety, and, to their great relief, they had little difficulty in finding their way to the high basin. Since the trail threaded a dry gulch for the greater part of the ascent, there were only a few stretches where they had to dismount and lead the horses, so not much time was lost. Nevertheless, it was past midnight when they reached the easier travelling through the basin toward the pass of the crusted snowdrifts. Riding abreast where the trail permitted, they herded the jacks before them, pushing on at speed where they could, and slowing up only in places where haste threatened disaster.
“What’s your notion, Phil?” Bromley asked, when, in the dark hour preceding the dawn, they found themselves at the foot of the precipitous climb to the pass. “Don’t you think we’d better camp down and wait for daylight before we tackle this hill?”
Philip’s reply was an emphatic negative. “We can make it; we’ve got to make it,” he declared. “If those people are chasing us, they can’t be very far behind, and if we stop here they’ll catch up with us. And if we let them do that, we’d never be able to shake them off.”
“As you like,” Bromley yielded, and the precipitous ascent was begun.
With anything less than tenderfoot inexperience for the driving power, and the luck of the novice for a guardian angel, the perilous climb over a trail that was all but invisible in the darkness would never have been made without disaster. Convinced by the first half-mile of zigzagging that two men could not hope to lead five animals in a bunch over an ascending trail which was practically no trail at all, they compromised with the necessities and covered the distance to the summit of the pass twice; once to drag the reluctant broncos to the top, and again to go through the same toilsome process with the still more reluctant pack animals. It was a gruelling business in the thin, lung-cutting air of the high altitude, with its freezing chill; and when it was finished they were fain to cast themselves down upon the rocky summit, gasping for breath and too nearly done in to care whether the animals stood or strayed, and with Bromley panting out, “Never again in this world for little Henry Wigglesworth! There’ll be a railroad built over this assassinating mountain range some fine day, and I’ll just wait for it.”
“Tough; but we made it,” was Philip’s comment. “We’re here for sunrise.”