"Going very slow. The frost's against him. Wound won't heal, and half-rotten pork and bread isn't quite the thing to feed a sick man. He should have been on his feet quite a while ago."
There was a brief discussion, and as the result of it twenty men, of whom Ingleby was one, were fixed upon to make the attempt. They were all of them willing, and started two days later before the stars had paled, while every man in the valley, except those on guard behind the log, assembled to see them go, though Ingleby did not know that Hetty Leger stood a little apart from them watching the shadowy figures melt into the gloom beneath the pines. It was, everybody knew, by no means certain that all of them would come back again.
They made their way up-river, dragging a few rude sledges with them, and they crossed the big divide in the face of one of the blinding snowstorms that rage on the higher ranges most of the winter. That cost them a week of tremendous labour; and then they floundered through tangled muskegs, where the stunted pines that grew in summer out of quaggy mire had been reaped and laid in rows by the Arctic winds. Their branches were strewn about them, and the men smashed a way through the horrible maze, making, with infinite pains, scarcely a league a day. Still, the muskegs were left behind, and the ground was clearer in a big _brûlée_ where fire had licked up undergrowth and branches and the great trunks rose gauntly, charred and tottering columns. There they made as much as four leagues in a day through ashes and dusty snow, and at last came out on the trail to the settlement, dragging with them one man whose feet were frost-bitten. Nobody had crossed the divide before; but that was probably because nobody had hitherto been driven by necessity into trying, and now, as usually happens in that country, the thing attempted had been done.
The settlement was not an especially cheerful spot, consisting as it did of three or four log-houses roofed with cedar shingles which their owners had split, a store, and a frame hotel covered in with galvanized iron, though slabs of bark had been largely used as well. They, however, rested there several days, and they needed it, while the hearts of most of them sank a trifle at the contemplation of the journey home. They had set out light, but the store was crammed with provisions, which the freighter, who had somehow brought them there, had abandoned all hope of taking farther. It was evident they must each go back with a load which a man unaccustomed to the packing necessary in that country could scarcely carry a mile, and the hardiest prospector among them shrank from crossing the divide with such a burden. The thing, however, had to be done, and on the night before their departure they were arranging their packs in the store when the man who kept it pointed to a pile of bags and cases in a corner.