Two camp necessities were fortunately
abundant, grass and water. Even so, the stress of the trail told on
the horses. They lost flesh. The extreme steepness of succeeding
hills bred galls under the heavy packs. They grew leg weary, no longer
following each other with sprightly step and heads high. Hazel pitied
them, for she herself was trail weary beyond words. The vagabond
instinct had fallen asleep. The fine aura of romance no longer hovered
over the venture.
Sometimes when dusk ended the day's journey and she swung her stiffened
limbs out of the saddle, she would cheerfully have foregone all the
gold in the North to be at her ease before the fireplace in their
distant cabin, with her man's head nesting in her lap, and no toll of
weary miles looming sternly on the morrow's horizon. It was all work,
trying work, the more trying because she sensed a latent uneasiness on
her husband's part, an uneasiness she could never induce him to embody
in words. Nevertheless, it existed, and she resented its existence--a
trouble she could not share. But she could not put her finger on the
cause, for Bill merely smiled a denial when she mentioned it.
Nor did she fathom the cause until upon a certain day which fell upon
the end of a week's wearisome traverse of the hardest country yet
encountered.
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