e so everlasting many of them. Johnston grew
more and more uneasy, until, when I called a halt as the sun bore south,
he looked at me appealingly, and I agreed to continue until there was just
time enough left to reach our previous camp by nightfall. So we held on,
and finally he turned to me.

"I've played the last game and lost it," he said. "Well, you kept your
part of the bargain; I'll keep mine. It's take up the home-trail, boys,
we're going back to camp."

He said it lightly, but I could tell that he felt the disappointment
bitterly, while even I, who had expected nothing, wheeled the pack-horse
around with an angry growl. It was toward dusk when we neared the creek we
had crossed in the morning, but it was no longer shrunken. Evidently the
dam of debris had given way, for it roared in full flood now, and it was
with anxiety that we quickened our pace. The hillsides loomed black out of
chilly mist that wrapped the serried ranks of climbing pines in their
smoky folds. It was not yet dark in the valley, but the light was dying
fast, and a bitter breeze swept down a darkening gorge, bringing with it
the moan of an unseen forest until presently this was lost in the voice of
the frothing torrent before us. There was neither fuel nor shelter on that
side, and we determined to attempt the crossing, for, as Harry said,
"Hunger alone is bad, but hunger and cold together are worth an effort to
avoid."

The prospector waded in foremost, sounding with a long fir pole. The
stream swirled in white wreaths about his waist, and Johnston turned to
speak to me, standing a few yards nearer with the ripples at his knee;
then I grasped the pack-horse's bridle and forced it into the water. The
beast carried a heavy load, including most of our blankets, and almost
the entire balance of our provisions. A rusty rifle was slung behind my
shoulders, besides tools and utensils, and Johnston was similarly
caparisoned, so I felt my way cautiously as the ice-cold waters frothed
higher about me. Near by, the creek poured into the main river, which
swept with a great black swirling into the gloom of the forest.

All went well until we gained the center of the stream, and then a loose
stone turned under the horse's hoof, or it sank into a deeper hollow, for
there was a plunge and a flounder, and, jerked sideways by the bridle, I
went down headforemost into the stream. This was a common enough accident,
but the bridle slipped from my fingers, an