"Safe so far! Some girl, my Judith!"
Then his jaw stiffened and he set the horses to the last shoulder below the Pass. Groaning, trembling, bloody flanks heaving, fighting constantly to turn, Tom, when Douglas sought to force him through the drift that topped the shoulder, deliberately lay down. Douglas freed himself from the stirrups and jerked the horse to his feet.
"I wouldn't own an ornery, unwilling brute like you, for a ranch!" he panted. "Do you think I'm enjoying this, that we are a bunch of dudes on a summer outing? I'll get angry at you in a moment, fellow!"
The pack-horse had embraced the opportunity to fall asleep. Tom, violently affronted by Doug's tirade, did his not inconsiderable best to kick his mate. Then he snapped at Douglas, who promptly cuffed him on the nose. Tom reared, fell, and began to roll down the terrible slope. The pack-horse did not waken nor stir. Doug flung himself after Tom. Slipping, falling, rolling, he finally caught the reins, and though Tom dragged him fifty yards on downward, he at last braced his spurs against a boulder, the reins held and Tom brought up, trembling and coughing. And now horse and man could only stand for a long time struggling for breath. When his numbing hands gave warning that his rest period must cease, Douglas, with the reins caught over his elbow, began a fight back to the crest of the ridge, a fight to which the previous portion of the trip had been as nothing. When they reached the led horse, still sleeping with his nose between his fore legs, there was no more fight left in Tom, and Douglas dropped into the snow to rest.
The moon was setting when he led his little train through the gigantic drift to the long slope which lifted to the Pass. There was no snow here. The slope, as far as Doug could discern in the failing light, was a glare of rough ice. Over this he dared not urge the horses until daylight. He looked at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock. He fastened the horses to the only cedar in sight, then stood in the wind debating with himself.
He was very much exhausted and the rare air and the intense cold were giving him no chance to recoup. This was no place to make camp. The tiny cedar offered neither shelter from the wind nor an adequate amount of fuel. And up here, in this hostile loneliness, his anxiety over Judith returned threefold. Strong as she was, clever as she was, she was as open to accidents as he. Supposing her horses had slipped on this ice and had gone over the black edge! Douglas dropped to his hands and knees and crept out upon the glassy surface. A hundred yards of this and he brought to pause before a giant boulder beside which grew several dwarf cedars. He drew his ax from its sheath and after long effort with his stiffened fingers, he got the green wood to burning. Dawn, about seven, found him napping against the warm face of the rock. He brought the horses up to the camp, fed them and himself, and as the sun shot over the Indian Range, then prepared to lead the horses onward.
The crest of Black Devil now lifted immediately above him. Just below the crest, a ledge broad enough for a pack team led straight into the blue of the sky. To the right the dark wall of the crest. To the left a sheer drop where the canyon between Lost Chief Range and Black Devil yawned hideously. This ledge, this narrow, painful crossing, made the Pass.
Douglas drew his ax and prepared to roughen a trail over the ice for the horses. But to his unspeakable delight, he had not gone far when he discovered that another ax and other horses had gone over the ice before him. He was grinning cheerfully as he sheathed his ax and took Tom's reins in hand.
It was noon when he reached the Pass. Sheer red walls to the right, rising to the hovering top of Black Devil. Still the sickening canyon depths to the left. To the south, myriad peaks, a whole world of peaks, snow-covered, serene. Far, far below, a blurred green valley, with a tiny white spot in its center. Johnson's Basin. The slope south from the Pass was very steep and deep with snow, but Douglas saw Judith's trail zig-zagging to a low shoulder round which it disappeared.
He fed the horses, ate some biscuits and bacon, both frozen, and started downward. Shortly snow began to fall, but he had no difficulty in following trail until mid-afternoon. Then he paused on the low shoulder. There were scrub pines in which Judith had made a camp. The snow had thickened until Doug could see scarcely ten feet ahead. He was utterly weary and very cold. He knew that he ought to go into camp for the night but he could not. He tied the horses beneath the trees, a grateful, windless haven to the poor brutes, and went slowly on to reconnoiter.