Kit plodded along the trail with his Indian packers. In recognition of
the fact that it was to be a long pack, straight to the top of
Chilcoot, his own load was only eighty pounds. The Indians plodded
under their loads, but it was a quicker gait than he had practised. Yet
he felt no apprehension, and by now had come to deem himself almost the
equal of an Indian.
At the end of a quarter of a mile he desired to rest. But the Indians
kept on. He stayed with them, and kept his place in the line. At the
half mile he was convinced that he was incapable of another step, yet
he gritted his teeth, kept his place, and at the end of the mile was
amazed that he was still alive. Then, in some strange way, came the
thing called second wind, and the next mile was almost easier than the
first. The third mile nearly killed him, and, though half delirious
with pain and fatigue, he never whimpered. And then, when he felt he
must surely faint, came the rest. Instead of sitting in the straps, as
was the custom of the white packers, the Indians slipped out of the
shoulder- and head-straps and lay at ease, talking and smoking. A full
half hour passed before they made another start. To Kit's surprise he
found himself a fresh man, and 'long hauls and long rests' became his
newest motto.
The pitch of Chilcoot was all he had heard of it, and many were the
occasions when he climbed with hands as well as feet. But when he
reached the crest of the divide in the thick of a driving snow-squall,
it was in the company of his Indians, and his secret pride was that he
had come through with them and never squealed and never lagged. To be
almost as good as an Indian was a new ambition to cherish.
When he had paid off the Indians and seen them depart, a stormy
darkness was falling, and he was left alone, a thousand feet above
timber line, on the back-bone of a mountain. Wet to the waist,
famished and exhausted, he would have given a year's income for a fire
and a cup of coffee. Instead, he ate half a dozen cold flap-jacks and
crawled into the folds of the partly unrolled tent. As he dozed off he
had time only for one fleeting thought, and he grinned with vicious
pleasure at the picture of John Bellew in the days to follow,
masculinely back-tripping his four hundred pounds up Chilcoot. As for
himself, even though burdened with two thousand pounds, he was bound
down the hill.
In the morning, stiff from his labours and numb with the frost, he
rolled out of the canvas, ate a couple of pounds of uncooked bacon,
buckled the straps on a hundred pounds, and went down the rocky way.
Several hundred yards beneath, the trail led across a small glacier and
down to Crater Lake. Other men packed across the glacier. All that
day he dropped his packs at the glacier's upper edge, and, by virtue of
the shortness of the pack, he put his straps on one hundred and fifty
pounds each load. His astonishment at being able to do it never
abated. For two dollars he bought from an Indian three leathery
sea-biscuits, and out of these, and a huge quantity of raw bacon, made
several meals. Unwashed, unwarmed, his clothing wet with sweat, he
slept another night in the canvas.
In the early morning he spread a tarpaulin on the ice, loaded it with
three-quarters of a ton, and started to pull. Where the pitch of the
glacier accelerated, his load likewise accelerated, overran him,
scooped him in on top, and ran away with him.
A hundred packers, bending under their loads, stopped to watch him. He
yelled frantic warnings, and those in his path stumbled and staggered
clear. Below, on the lower edge of the glacier, was pitched a small
tent, which seemed leaping toward him, so rapidly did it grow larger.
He left the beaten track where the packers' trail swerved to the left,
and struck a patch of fresh snow. This arose about him in frosty
smoke, while it reduced his speed. He saw the tent the instant he
struck it, carrying away the corner guys, bursting in the front flaps,
and fetching up inside, still on top of the tarpaulin and in the midst
of his grub-sacks. The tent rocked drunkenly, and in the frosty vapour
he found himself face to face with a startled young woman who was
sitting up in her blankets--the very one who had called him chechaquo
at Dyea.
"Did you see my smoke?" he queried cheerfully.
She regarded him with disapproval.
"Talk about your magic carpets!" he went on.
"Do you mind removing that sack from my foot?" she said coldly.
He looked, and lifted his weight quickly.
"It wasn't a sack. It was my elbow. Pardon me."
The information did not perturb her, and her coolness was a challenge.
"It was a mercy you did not overturn the stove," she said.
He followed her glance and saw a sheet-iron stove and a coffee-pot,
attended by a young squaw. He sniffed the coffee and looked back to
the girl.
"I'm a chechaquo," he said.
Her bored expression told him that he was stating the obvious. But he
was unabashed.
"I've shed my shooting-irons," he added.
Then she recognized him, and her eyes lighted.
"I never thought you'd get this far," she informed him.
Again, and greedily, he sniffed the air.
"As I live, coffee!" He turned and directly addressed her. "I'll give
you my little finger--cut it right off now; I'll do anything; I'll be
your slave for a year and a day or any other odd time, if you'll give
me a cup out of that pot."
And over the coffee he gave his name and learned hers--Joy Gastell.
Also, he learned that she was an old-timer in the country. She had
been born in a trading post on the Great Slave, and as a child had
crossed the Rockies with her father and come down to the Yukon. She
was going in, she said, with her father, who had been delayed by
business in Seattle, and who had then been wrecked on the ill-fated
Chanter and carried back to Puget Sound by the rescuing steamer.
In view of the fact that she was still in her blankets, he did not make
it a long conversation, and, heroically declining a second cup of
coffee, he removed himself and his quarter of a ton of baggage from her
tent. Further, he took several conclusions away with him: she had a
fetching name and fetching eyes; could not be more than twenty, or
twenty-one or -two; her father must be French; she had a will of her
own and temperament to burn; and she had been educated elsewhere than
on the frontier.