Got out at infinite peril and
fatigue, climbed, struggled, stumbled, held on, pulled. I slipped once
and had a bad knee for six weeks. Never once did I dare to look back and
down. It was always up, and the top was always receding. And when we
reached camp, the Head, who had been on an excursion of his own, refused
to be thrilled, and spent the evening telling how he had been climbing
over the top of the world on his hands and knees. In sheer scorn, we let
him babble.

But my hat is off to him, after all, for he had ready for us, and swears
to this day to its truth, the best fish-story of the trip.

Lying on the top of one of our packing-cases was a great bull-trout. Now
a bull-trout has teeth, and held in a vise-like grip in the teeth of
this one was a smaller trout. In the mouth of the small trout was a
gray-and-black fly. The Head maintained that he had hooked the small
fish and was about to draw it to shore when the bull-trout leaped out of
the water, caught the small fish, and held on grimly. The Head thereupon
had landed them both.

In proof of this, as I have said, he had the two fish on top of a
packing-case. But it is not a difficult matter to place a small trout
cross-wise in the jaws of a bull-trout, and to this day we are not quite
certain.

There _were_ tooth-marks on the little fish, but, as one of the guides
said, he wouldn't put it past the Head to have made them himself.

That night we received a telegram. I remember it with great
distinctness, because the man who brought it in charged fifteen dollars
for delivering it. He came at midnight, and how he had reached us no one
will ever know. The telegram notified us that a railroad strike was
about to take place and that we should get out as soon as possible.

Early the next morning we held a conference. It was about as far back as
it was to go ahead over the range. And before us still lay the Great
Adventure of the pass.

We took a vote on it at last and the "ayes" carried. We would go ahead,
making the best time we could. If the railroads had stopped when we got
out, we would merely turn our pack-outfit toward the east and keep on
moving. We had been all summer in the saddle by that time, and a matter
of thirty-five hundred miles across the continent seemed a trifle.

Dan Devore brought us other news that morning, however. Cascade Pass was
closed with snow. A miner who lived alone somewhere up the gorge had
brought in the information. It was a se