The trail wound upward into country that grew more and more gloomy and dispiriting. There was something about the great rock masses poised above the trail, the slaty, leaden sky and the occasional gusts of wind-blown snow that struck a chill to Tom’s heart.
There was little to break the monotony of precipice and sky on the one side, while beside the trail on the other was a deep crevasse, and beyond another wall of rock. Tom peered over into the depths from time to time and thought, with a shudder, of the consequences of a fall. And that possibility was by no means remote. One slip on the treacherous foothold of the path that hung on the mountainside like an eyebrow on a face, and the victim of the accident would go sliding and plunging down the slippery slopes into that forbidding pit.
It was not a thought to inspire cheerfulness, and Tom refrained from speaking of it to his companions. But it might have been noticed that he kept to the inside of the trail. The mameluke dogs, too, by instinct avoided the outer edge and kept hugging the inside wall of the trail as far as possible from the gaping chasm.
It must have been toward mid-afternoon, as time is reckoned in those latitudes, that old Joe paused with a worried look on his face.
“Attendez!” he cried, holding up one finger.
The mamelukes stopped, their red tongues lolling out and their breath coming in long heaves. They were glad of the respite, whatever had caused it.
Tom halted behind the sled, and Jack turned his eyes on old Joe, whose face betokened the most eager attention. His body was tense with concentrated energy, as if he were putting every fiber of his being into what he was doing, which was listening.
Tom thought of the old man’s watchword, “To watch always.”
For some minutes they stood like this, and then old Joe signified that all was well and they went forward again. But ever and anon the old man cast an uneasy eye about him. It was plain that he was worried and wished the long trail were at an end.
In that gloomy canyon between the beetling walls that rose on either side seemingly straight up to the gray sky, the old trapper’s voice rang stridently as he called to his dogs or cracked his whip with loud words of encouragement.