“It’s gluey feet they want,” said the latter, when they stopped for a minute or two. “You can’t expect horses to crawl up a wall.”
“They’ve managed about half of it,” Weston declared. “We could make this quite an easy trail with a little grading. It’s the only really difficult spot.”
“Well,” said Devine, dryly, “I guess you could. In this country they call any trail easy that you can crawl up on your hands and knees. Still, that little grading’s going to cost you about two thousand dollars a mile.”
They could scarcely see one another when they went on again, and the sound of their footsteps was muffled by the sliding snow. Weston could dimly make out something that moved on in front of him, but it had no certain shape, and he stumbled heavily every now and then as the stones rolled round beneath him. He gripped the pack-horse’s bridle in a half-numbed hand, but, as he admitted afterward, he made no attempt to lead the beast. He said he rather clung to it for company, for the others vanished now and then for minutes amidst the whirling snow.
Suddenly there was a crash and a cry behind him. For a moment he stood half-dazed, with his hand on the bridle, while the jaded horse plunged. Then he let it go as the freighter appeared, and together they stumbled back to where Devine was clinging to the bridle of another horse which lay close at his feet amidst a wreath of snow. He staggered back just as they reached him; there was a frantic scrambling in the snow, and then the half-seen horse rolled over and slid away down the white slope of the gully.
They watched it, horrified, for a moment or two; and said nothing for a brief space when it vanished altogether into the obscurity. The sight was more unpleasant because they knew that they had seen only the commencement of that awful journey. Then Devine, who was white and gasping, made a deprecatory gesture.
“I don’t know whether it was my fault,” he said. “The beast stumbled and almost jerked me over. Then I guess the bridle either broke or pulled out.”
“Two horses and four bags of ore, and we’re not through yet,” commented the freighter. “Guess it’s going to cost you something if you pack much pay-dirt out over Dead Pine trail. Anyway, you’ll have to get that grading done before I come back here again.”
“Get on,” said Weston, quietly.
They struggled on; and in another half-hour the gully died out and lost itself in the hillside, after which they made a rather faster pace over the thinning talus. Still, it was snowing hard, and none of them was capable of much further exertion when, soaked through and white all over, they limped into the lee of a ridge of rock on the crest of the divide. A bitter wind wailed above them, but there was a little shelter beneath the wall of ragged stone, and, picketing the jaded horses, they lay down in their wet blankets, packed close together in a hollow, when their frugal meal was over. There was nothing they might make a fire with on that empty wind-swept plateau.