Another day of pretty hard travel over
sandy plains and rocky hills brought us to the foot of the mountain
where we had plenty of good water and an abundance of fuel. A little
sprinkle of rain early in the evening was the first we had seen since
the memorable night after Field had eaten the little red berries.
Early Saturday morning we filled our canteen with water and started up
the mountain. I had been carrying most of the jerk, but the stock was
running down quite rapidly. My companions bag now being almost empty,
and as he had little else to carry while I had the gun and some other
things, including his heavy overcoat, I divided the jerk, putting about
half of it into his sack. All day long we were climbing the mountain.
Late in the afternoon I was several rods ahead of Field when he called
to me to stop: I did so and when he came up he appeared to be a little
cross and insisted that we were not traveling in the direction formerly
agreed upon. I requested him to let me see the little compass which he
had in his pocket, and on examining it he found that he was mistaken;
whereupon he muttered something which I thought was "swear words," and
then we went marching on. In a little while we were within the old snow
limits where we found large bodies of old icy looking snow in places
shaded by trees and rocks, and a little before dark went into camp. We
gathered some old dry timber and made a large fire, then some green fir
limbs for a bed. When I began to prepare our bed on one side of the
flaming logs, to my surprise Field began to prepare one on the other
side of the fire.
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