he top of Chilkoot,
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, but, 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 Chilkoot 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 backbone 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 flapjacks and crawled into the folds
of the partly unrolled tent. As he dozed off he had time for only 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.