with unbelief to the year before, when he
had climbed that same pass with a hundred and fifty pounds on his back.
If those loads had weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, then Bondell's
grip weighed five hundred.

The first rise of the divide from Crater Lake was across a small glacier.
Here was a well-defined trail. But above the glacier, which was also
above timber-line, was naught but a chaos of naked rock and enormous
boulders. There was no way of seeing the trail in the darkness, and he
blundered on, paying thrice the ordinary exertion for all that he
accomplished. He won the summit in the thick of howling wind and driving
snow, providentially stumbling upon a small, deserted tent, into which he
crawled. There he found and bolted some ancient fried potatoes and half
a dozen raw eggs.

When the snow ceased and the wind eased down, he began the almost
impossible descent. There was no trail, and he stumbled and blundered,
often finding himself, at the last moment, on the edge of rocky walls and
steep slopes the depth of which he had no way of judging. Part way down,
the stars clouded over again, and in the consequent obscurity he slipped
and rolled and slid for a hundred feet, landing bruised and bleeding on
the bottom of a large shallow hole. From all about him arose the stench
of dead horses. The hole was handy to the trail, and the packers had
made a practice of tumbling into it their broken and dying animals. The
stench overpowered him, making him deadly sick, and as in a nightmare he
scrambled out. Half-way up, he recollected Bondell's gripsack. It had
fallen into the hole with him; the pack-strap had evidently broken, and
he had forgotten it. Back he went into the pestilential charnel-pit,
where he crawled around on hands and knees and groped for half an hour.
Altogether he encountered and counted seventeen dead horses (and one
horse still alive that he shot with his revolver) before he found
Bondell's grip. Looking back upon a life that had not been without
valour and achievement, he unhesitatingly declared to himself that this
return after the grip was the most heroic act he had ever performed. So
heroic was it that he was twice on the verge of fainting before he
crawled out of the hole.

By the time he had descended to the Scales, the steep pitch of Chilcoot
was past, and the way became easier. Not that it was an easy way,
however, in the best of places; but it became a really possible trail,