eat
like a ravenous animal, and, wolf-eyed, ask for more.

When they had moved the outfit across the foot-logs at the mouth of the
Canyon, they made a change in their plans. Word had come across the Pass
that at Lake Linderman the last available trees for building boats were
being cut. The two cousins, with tools, whipsaw, blankets, and grub
on their backs, went on, leaving Kit and his uncle to hustle along the
outfit. John Bellew now shared the cooking with Kit, and both packed
shoulder to shoulder. Time was flying, and on the peaks the first snow
was falling. To be caught on the wrong side of the Pass meant a delay of
nearly a year. The older man put his iron back under a hundred pounds.
Kit was shocked, but he gritted his teeth and fastened his own straps to
a hundred pounds. It hurt, but he had learned the knack, and his body,
purged of all softness and fat, was beginning to harden up with lean
and bitter muscle. Also, he observed and devised. He took note of the
head-straps worn by the Indians and manufactured one for himself, which
he used in addition to the shoulder-straps. It made things easier, so
that he began the practice of piling any light, cumbersome piece of
luggage on top. Thus, he was soon able to bend along with a hundred
pounds in the straps, fifteen or twenty more lying loosely on top of the
pack and against his neck, an axe or a pair of oars in one hand, and in
the other the nested cooking-pails of the camp.

But work as they would, the toil increased. The trail grew more rugged;
their packs grew heavier; and each day saw the snow-line dropping down
the mountains, while freight jumped to sixty cents. No word came from
the cousins beyond, so they knew they must be at work chopping down the
standing trees and whipsawing them into boat-planks. John Bellew grew
anxious. Capturing a bunch of Indians back-tripping from Lake Linderman,
he persuaded them to put their straps on the outfit. They charged thirty
cents a pound to carry it to the summit of Chilkoot, and it nearly broke
him. As it was, some four hundred pounds of clothes-bags and camp outfit
were not handled. He remained behind to move it along, dispatching Kit
with the Indians. At the summit Kit was to remain, slowly moving his
ton until overtaken by the four hundred pounds with which his uncle
guaranteed to catch him.

Kit plodded along the trail with his Indian packers. In recognition of
the fact that it was to be a long pack, straight to t