jacks and crawled into the folds of the partly unrolled tent. As he
dozed off he had time only for 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.
Several hundred yards beneath, the trail led across a small glacier
and down to Crater Lake. Other men packed across the glacier. All
that day he dropped his packs at the glacier's upper edge, and, by
virtue of the shortness of the pack, he put his straps on one
hundred and fifty pounds each load. His astonishment at being able
to do it never abated. For two dollars he bought from an Indian
three leathery sea-biscuits, and out of these, and a huge quantity
of raw bacon, made several meals. Unwashed, unwarmed, his clothing
wet with sweat, he slept another night in the canvas.

In the early morning he spread a tarpaulin on the ice, loaded it
with three-quarters of a ton, and started to pull. Where the pitch
of the glacier accelerated, his load likewise accelerated, overran
him, scooped him in on top, and ran away with him.

A hundred packers, bending under their loads, stopped to watch him.
He yelled frantic warnings, and those in his path stumbled and
staggered clear. Below, on the lower edge of the glacier, was
pitched a small tent, which seemed leaping toward him, so rapidly
did it grow larger. He left the beaten track where the packers'