And now on Dyea beach he stood and scowled as he watched the rain water collect in drops and roll down the sides of his packages.
"He said they was Injuns would pack this here junk," complained a man beside him, "Where'n hell be they?"
"Search me," grinned Brent, "How much can you carry?"
"Don't know—not a hell of a lot over them rocks—an' he said this here Chilkoot was so steep you had to climb it instead of walk."
"Suppose we make a try," suggested Brent. "A man ought to handle a hundred pounds——"
"A hundred pounds! You're crazy as hell! I ain't no damn burro—me. Not no hundred pounds no twenty-eight mile, an' part of it cat-climbin'. 'Bout twenty-five's more my size."
"You like to walk better than I do," shrugged Brent, "Have you stopped to figure that a twenty-five-pound pack means four trips to the hundred
—forty trips for the thousand? And forty round trips of twenty-eight miles means something over twenty-two hundred miles of hiking."
"Gawd!" exclaimed the other, in dismay, "It must be hell to be eggicated! If I'd figgered that out, I'd of stayed on the boat! We're in a hell of a fix now, an' no ways to git back. That grub'll all be et gittin' it over the pass, an' when we git there, we ain't nowheres—we got them lakes an' river to make after that. Looks like by the time we hit this here Bonanza place all the claims will be took up, or the gold'll be rotted with old age."
"You're sure a son of gloom," opined Brent as he stooped and affixed his straps to a hundred-pound sack of flour. "But I'm going to hit the trail. So long."