"He's done up, poor devil!" said he; "he'll go no further. What shall we do?"
I shook my head, for it was not I who arranged or ordered things when Mac was about. He was silent for a while.
"There's nothing for it," he said at last, "but one thing. We must put all the other kieutan can stand on him."
By this time I had got the pack off Dick, and he lay down perfectly flat upon his side, with the blood slowly oozing from his knees, and his flanks still heaving from the exertions which had brought him up the hill to die on the top of it.
"Come on," said Mac, as he moved off with what he meant to put on the other pony.
But at first I could not go. I put my hand in my pocket, took out a piece of bread, and, kneeling down by the poor animal, I put it to his lips. He mumbled it with his teeth and dropped it out. Then in my hat I got some water out of a little pool and offered it to him. He drank some and then fell back again. I took my revolver from my belt, stroked his soft nose once more, and, putting the weapon to his head between his eye and ear, I fired. He shivered all over, stiffened a little, and all was still except for the slow drip of the blood that ran out of his ear from a vein the ball had divided. Then I went on—and I hope no one will think me weak if I confess my sight was not quite so clear as it had been before, and if there was a strange haziness about the cruelly cold trail and mountain side that did not come from the falling snow.
At our camp that night we spoke little more than was absolutely necessary, and turned in as soon as we had eaten supper, drunk a tin of coffee, and smoked a couple of pipes. Fortunately for the remaining horse, in the place we had reached there was a little feed, a few tussocks of withering frost-nipped bunch grass, which he ate greedily to the last roots his sharp teeth could reach. And then he pawed or "rustled" for more, using his hoof to bare what was hidden under the snow. But for that we should have left him on the trail next morning.
The toil and suffering of the third day's march were dreadful, for I grew footsore, and my feet bled at the heels, while the skin rose in blisters on every toe, which rapidly became raw. But Mac was a man of iron, and never faltered or grew tired; and his example, and a feeling of shame at being outdone by another, kept me doggedly behind him at a few paces' distance. How the pony stood that day was a miracle, for he must have been made of iron and not flesh and blood to carry his pack, while climbing up and sliding down the steep ascents and slopes of the hills, while every few yards some wind-felled tree had to be clambered over almost as a dog would do it. He was always clammy with sweat, but he seemed in better condition than on the second day, perhaps on account of the grass he had been able to get during the night. Yet he had had to work all night to get it, while I and Mac had slept in the torpor of great exhaustion.
Late in the evening we came to the banks of the Columbia, across which stretched sandy flats and belts of scrub, until the level ended, and lofty mountains rose once more, covered with snow and fringed with sullen clouds, thousands of feet above where we stood. Mac stopped, and looked anxiously across the broad stream; and when he saw a faint curl of bluish smoke rising a mile away in the sunless air, he pointed to it with a more pleased expression that I had seen on his face since he had roused me so hurriedly on that snowy morning three days ago.
"There is somebody over there, at any rate, old man," he said almost cheerfully, "though I don't know what the thunder they're doing here, unless it's Montana Bill come up trapping. He said he was going to do it, but if so, what's he doing down here?"