“We might wait for him,” he mused, “but, no, that wouldn’t do. He might turn back. Then all that time would be lost. No, we must press on. We must get off this glacier at once.”
In spite of his optimism, this glacier bothered him. He had taken this trail at the suggestion of Jennings, a man who had gone over the trail during the gold rush of ’98 and who had offered to go with them now without pay. He had, as he expressed it, been called back by the “lure of the North,” and must answer the call. Curlie had decided to accept his assistance and advice. Now he wrinkled his brow in thought. Had he made a mistake in the very beginning?
Just then, as if in answer to his question, Jennings, a short, broad-shouldered person with keen, deep-set blue eyes and drooping moustache, parted the tent-flaps and entered.
“What? Not turned in yet?” His eyes showed surprise.
“Had to see that you got back safe,” smiled Curlie. He made a mental note of the fact that Jennings had not brought back the package he had carried away. Only a light axe swung at his belt.
“Well, that’s kind and thoughtful,” said Jennings. “But we’d better get into them sleepin’-bags pronto. Got a good stiff day to-morrow. Make good progress too or I’m no sourdough-musher.”
Fifteen minutes later, Curlie having buried himself deep in the hairy depths of his sleeping-bag, had given himself over to a few moments of thought before the drowsy quiet of the tent lulled him to repose.
The sleeping-bags, in spite of Joe’s forebodings, proved to be all that one might ask. With nothing but a square of canvas between his sleeping-bag and the ice, and with the temperature at thirty below, clad only in his pajamas Curlie felt quite as comfortable as he might have felt in his own bed back home.
“Wonderful thing, these bags,” he thought dreamily. His thought about the future, the day just before him, was not quite so reassuring. They had come to ridges of ice on the surface of the glacier just at nightfall. There were many of these ridges. Dogs without sleds could climb them, but up their slopes they could not pull a pound. A man climbed them with difficulty. His feet slipping at every attempted step, he was constantly in danger of being dashed to the bottom. How were they to pack eight hundred pounds of equipment and supplies over these seemingly unsurmountable barriers?
Yet he dreaded to think of turning back. That meant four days of travel to reach a point which, straight over the glacier, was but twenty miles before them.