again, as if all hell was against me; I had to close up on Abe or lose
him, but he never saw me till we got so far I couldn't get back; though
he could have dropped me out of the saddle with a bullet, and had the
right to do it.

"When I rode up he only looked at me. If I had been as small as I
felt, he'd never seen me. He ought to have abused me; but he didn't.
He ought to have shot me; but he didn't; or turned me back and that
would have been worse than shooting. But if he'd been my own father he
couldn't have acted different. He just told me to come along."

Laramie paused. He was speaking under a strain: "I didn't understand
it then; but he knew it was too late to quarrel. He knew there was
about one chance in a hundred for him to get through; for me, there was
about one in a hundred thousand--in fact, he knew I _couldn't_ get
through, so he didn't abuse me.

"You don't know what the winter snow on the pass is. When it got too
bad for us, he put his horse ahead to break the trail, but he let me
ride mine as far as I could--he knew what was coming. When my horse
quit, he told me to tramp along behind him.

"I guess you know about how long a boy's wind would last ten thousand
feet up in the air. I wasn't used to it. I quit."

Laramie drew from his pocket a handkerchief and knotted it nervously in
his fingers: "He told me to get up," he went on. "I did my level best
a way farther. It was no use. I quit again. He was easy with me.
But I couldn't get up and I told him to go on.

"Abe wouldn't go. I couldn't walk another step in that wind and snow
to save my soul from perdition. I just couldn't. And when I tell you
next what I asked of him, then you'll understand how mean a common
tramp like me can be. But I've got past pretty much caring what you
think of me--only I want you to know what _I_ think, and thought, of
Abe Hawk. I did the meanest thing then I ever did in my life--I asked
him to let me ride his horse. It was useless. I offered him all the
money I had. He refused. He didn't just look at me and move on, the
way most men would to save their own skins and leave me to what I
deserved. He stopped and explained that if his horse gave out we were
done--we could never break a trail to the top without the horse.

"It was blowing. He stripped his horse. The mail went into the snow.
I tried again to walk. I didn't get a hundred feet. When I fell down
that time he saw it was my finish.