on.
The Kid, he was tied onto that sled, and he laid there looking at me. 'You going to leave me, Sackett? I don't blame you. Unless you can fly, you ain't going up there.'
I made one end of the rope fast to the head of the toboggan, and got ready to climb. The rope was made fast by taking a round turn on each runner, then tying the end of the rope to the standing part, so the sled would hang straight when I started to pull it.
Going up ahead, I cut a few toe-holds in the ice, and found a couple I'd used before where no ice had collected. When at last I climbed the chimney, I guided Ange.
She was little, but mighty lithe and strong when it came right down to it, and she made easier work of that climb up the chimney than I had.
The old, gnarled bristle-cone was standing there where I'd remembered it, atop that chimney and rooted deep in the rock. Taking a turn around that old tree, I dug my heels in and started to hand over hand that rope. Like I said, I'm a big man with a lot of beef in my shoulders and arms, but when I took the strain of that full weight, I surely knew I was in trouble.
Getting him clear of the ground was only part of it. He had to fend himself off the rocky face with his hands. A time or two, I could feel him helping me where he could get a hand-hold.
Ange stood behind me and cleared the rope around the trunk of the pine so we could hold what we had got. My hands were stiff, and I didn't think I'd ever get my fingers unwound from about that rope. But I hauled away.
Stopping to rest myself, with the Kid hanging there like a papoose slung on a pack board, I looked off across the valley.
Somebody was coming down the trail. How far? Maybe a quarter of a mile, a bit more or less. There were only four of them, the man behind was making a slow thing of it.
One of them jerked up his rifle and we heard the sound of a shot. What happened to that bullet I never could say, but it came nowhere near us. Judging distance across a canyon like that, when the target is higher than you-- that's quite a stunt. Why, I've missed a few shots like that my own self.
Digging in my heels, I took hold of that rope. My arms ached and I was fighting for breath. Those high-up ridges surely took a man's wind. But I got him up a couple of feet farther, beat my hands to warm them, and started at it again.
There was no time to look across the canyon. There was only time to haul away. Heave, and heave again . . . catch a breath, and heave again.
Then the toboggan brought up against something and stuck.
'Ange,' I said, straightening up, 'I'm going down. When I ,clear the sled, you get as much rope around that pine as can be.'
'Tell?'
Turning around, I looked at her. She was looking right at me. 'Why are you doing this? Is it because of the way I acted?'
Well, I declare! I hadn't thought of that. 'No, Ange, I never gave thought to that. No man can abide much by what a woman thinks, at times like this. He does what it's his nature to do. That man down there ... we had words one time. He was figuring to shoot me, and I was planning to beat him to it.
That there's one thing, this here's another. That's a helpless man, and when I get him up here and get him safe, then maybe 'hell come a-gunning for me. So I'll have to shoot him.'
I started down the slope, then stopped and looked back. 'Seems a lot of trouble to go to, doesn't it?'
Well, I cleared him, and we hoisted him out on top of the ridge, using the same route I'd found on that day when I left Ange in the cave.
Down below was Cap, our log house, and our claim -- down there in those trees. And up here the wind was blowing a gale, and a man could scarcely stand erect. One thing I knew: we had to get off that mountain, and fast. It was clouding up again--great banks of gray, solid cloud. That could mean more snow. That canyon could be twenty feet deep in snow before the week was out.
Camp was a half-mile as the crow flies, but a good five thousand feet down. Looking north to where I'd spotted what looked like a way down, I could still see it, despite the snow. Once into the trees, we could make it all right, although it would be work.
This ridge was about thirteen thousand feet up, and the wind was roaring along it All the gray granite was swept dean, although there were flurries of snow in the air from time to time. Leaning into the wind, we started on, towing the sled. Finally we got down over the edge of the ridge. Right away, the wind seemed to let up.
My face was raw from the wind, my hands were numb. My fingers in their gloves felt stiff, and I was afraid that the Kid, held immovable the way he was, would freeze to death.
Lowering the sled away ahead of us, we made it down. One time the wind came around a shoulder of the mountain and lifted the sled, man and all, like it was a leaf, but set it down again before the rope tore from my hands. We both heard the Kid scream when the drop jolted his broken leg.
Bracing myself on great shattered rocks, I lowered him. Climbing after, lowering Ange, I lost all sense of time, and could not remember when it ever had been warm.
Below us was a huge old tree, ripped from the rock by its roots. It sprawled like a great spider, petrified in the moment of death, legs writhing. A little below it were some wind-tortured trees, and then the forest We could see the tops of the trees and, far off below, a white, white world of snow, with here and there a faint feather of smoke rising from some house.
Hugging that wind-torn mountainside, and looking down into those treetops, I could hardly believe there was a house with a fire burning in it, or Ma a-rocking in her old rocker, or Orrin a-singing. It was a world far away from the wind, the cold, and snow that drove at your face like sand.
But, easing the sled down a little farther, we got into the trees. From there to the bottom it was mostly a matter of guiding the sled, belaying the rope around a tree here and there to ease it, and working our way through.
