“Mush!” he grunted with each shake.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” grumbled Stacy. “It makes me think I’m going to have breakfast.”
“Heap big mush. Big snow, big mountain,” grunted the Innuit, with a sweeping gesture towards the towering peaks of the St. Elias range which they were now entering.
“Have we got to go through that?” begged Walter anxiously.
“Um,” replied the guide.
“But how shall we ever make it?”
“Mush.”
“Yes, mush,” jeered Chunky. “You just spread the mush over the mountain side and slide. Don’t you understand, Walt? My, but you are thick.”
All that afternoon they fought their way through the rugged mountains, making camp that night in a gloomy pass at the foot of Vancouver Mountain, a vast pile that towered nearly fourteen thousand feet high. It seemed to the Pony Rider Boys that they were a long way from civilization, and Tad admitted that he would soon be lost were he obliged to follow a trail up there.
141The camp was made about six o’clock, still with broad daylight, but the boys considered that they had done enough for one day. The ponies were weary and Tad knew better than to press them too hard. After supper the freckle-faced boy shouldered his rifle.