Esau looked ill-used at me because I laughed, and kept on muttering all the time we were in that terrible gorge, just as if the gloom of the place oppressed him. As for me, I seemed to have enough to do to watch where I placed my feet as we slowly climbed on for hour after hour, thinking all the time of the valley I had read of years before in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and feeling half ready to see some horrible giant or monster rise up to stop our way.
It was rapidly growing so dark down between those terrible jagged walls that I began to think we should have to make camp soon and sleep there in some one or other of the black hollows, and without fire, for there was nothing visible but scraps of moss, when, all at once, on turning a corner which had appeared to block the way, it began to grow lighter, for the sides of the gorge were not so perpendicular.
Then another corner was turned, and it was lighter still with the warm soft light of evening, and there in the distance was a glowing spot which I took at first for the sun, but which I knew directly after to be the ice-capped top of a mountain glowing in the sun. Below it was the pine forest again, looking almost black, while away on high a cascade came gliding down like golden spray, touched as it was by the setting sun.
Half an hour’s more weary tramp, and the chief of the Indian party stopped short, and we found that we had suddenly come upon an opening by the river where about a couple of dozen Indians were standing by the rows of salmon they had hung up to dry in the sun.
They all stood gazing at us in a stolid way, till the man who had guided us went up to them, and then one of the party turned back to their cluster of teepees and came up to us directly after with a friendly offering in the shape of a couple of freshly-caught still living salmon, which Quong bore off eagerly to a spot above the camp.
“But the Indians,” I said to Gunson. “Shall we be safe?”
“Safe or in danger, my lad,” he replied, “I want food and rest. This is the worst day’s work we have had. Ah, I am beginning to believe in Quong. Here, let’s help the little fellow. You get some water while I cut some wood.”
As we separated I had to go by Esau, who looked at me suspiciously.
“I say,” he whispered, “what has old Gunson been saying about me?”