"You're no pack mule, little person," he would say. "It don't hurt me.
I've done this for years."
But even with abnormal strength and endurance, it was killing work to
buck those ragged slopes with a heavy load. Only by terrible,
unremitting effort could he advance any appreciable distance. From
daybreak till noon they would climb and rest alternately. Then, after
a meal and a short breathing spell, he would go back alone after the
second load. They were footsore, and their bodies ached with weariness
that verged on pain when they gained the pass that cut the summit of
the Klappan Range.
"Well, we're over the hump," Bill remarked thankfully. "It's a
downhill shoot to the Skeena. I don't think it's more than fifty or
sixty miles to where we can take to the water."
They made better time on the western slope, but the journey became a
matter of sheer endurance. Summer was on them in full blaze. The
creeks ran full and strong. Thunderstorms blew up out of a clear sky
to deluge them. Food was scanty--flour and salt and tea; with meat and
fish got by the way. And the black flies and mosquitoes swarmed about
them maddeningly day and night.
So they came at last to the Skeena, and Hazel's heart misgave her when
she took note of its swirling reaches, the sinuous eddies--a deep,
swift, treacherous stream.
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