Some time early the next afternoon Marion Chandler looked back on the long line of horses from her position near the head of the string. The packs, covered with white tarpaulins and swaying slightly from side to side with the motion of the horses, made the pack string look like some huge centipede, each white pack a joint in the body.
The trail itself was hardly two feet wide in most places, a narrow ribbon cut out of the wall of the canyon. Below, a stream tumbled pell-mell over rocks and sunken logs, hurling itself around bends, lashing itself into spumes of white foam in its brawling haste.
High above towered the walls of the canyon, granite pinnacles, in places seeming to overhang the trail. Farther back were more gradual slopes, splashed here and there with dark patches of pine, until, finally, far, far up were the serrated ridges of the highest peaks.
The trail wound interminably. Starting from a ranch located in a mountain “cove,” it had followed a stream through timbered meadows where the cold lay in a still, hushed blanket of frosty white. Now the sun was high, and the trail had dropped sharply down the canyon. At these lower elevations, the sun poured heat into the narrow defile.
Hank Lucas led the procession. Behind him was Corliss Adrian, whom Marion judged to be about twenty-seven. She had chestnut hair, brown eyes, and was wrapped in an aura of subdued tragedy. It was a pose which well suited her, a pose which Marion felt would make men refer to her as “brave.”
Marion, watching her ride, knew that she was a tenderfoot. Her back was too stiff. She insisted on having her stirrups too short, the effect being to throw her weight far back in the saddle. Twice lately she had asked casually of Flank Lucas, “I wonder how far we’ve gone since we started.” And Marion knew from the vague but cheerful manner in which Lucas answered the question that this was a routine with him, the first indication that a “dude” was becoming fatigued. But Corliss was being brave and uncomplaining, riding in silence.
Back of Marion Chandler, James A. Dewitt, a thick, jolly individual in his middle thirties, frankly hung to the horn of the Western saddle when he came to the bad places in the trail. Behind him rode Sam Eaton, who was doing the cooking for the party, a quiet, middle-aged man who said nothing except when absolutely necessary.
Back of him the packhorses came swaying along, and bringing up the rear was Howard Kenney, the assistant wrangler, a young man who had recently been discharged from the Army and whose eyes contained a touch of sadness. Marion had noticed that when he became jovial he seemed to make a conscious attempt at wrenching his mind away from past memories, an attempt which would almost invariably be followed by a period of detachment during which his tired gray eyes would focus on the distance.
Now he was riding along, accepting the cloud of dust kicked up by the packtrain as part of the day’s work, from time to time swinging over in the saddle to scoop up a rock of convenient throwing size from the side of the mountain. Then he would stand in his stirrups and chuck the rock with unerring accuracy to prod along whatever packhorse at the moment seemed to be inclined to hold back.
Hank Lucas, at the head of the procession rode with long stirrups and a loose back. His sweat-stained sombrero was far back on his head, and he kept up a steady succession of cowboy songs. At times he would raise his voice so that those behind him could hear the rollicking words of a fast-moving verse or two, then suddenly he would invoke a veil of self-imposed censorship which left the words mere garbled sounds.
At midafternoon the long string of horses wound its way down the canyon and debouched on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.
The trail followed the river for a couple of miles, then wound around a rocky point where the way had been blasted out of sheer granite, and here the trail was barely wide enough to give a horse footing. On the left there was a drop of some two hundred feet, and so narrow was the way that the overhang of the saddle and the bulge of the horse’s side completely obscured the edge of the trail. Sitting erect in the saddle and looking down, one saw only two hundred feet of empty space under the left stirrup, with glinting water below.
Dewitt, grabbing his saddle horn and staring with fear-widened eyes at the trail, still managed to preserve a semblance of his joviality. “I say up there, Hank,” he yelled.
Hank swung loosely in the saddle, looking back inquiringly over his left shoulder, pivoting in such a way that he didn’t disturb his balance in the least. His face showed only courteous and casual interest.
“What would you do if you met another pack coming from the opposite direction in a place like this?” Dewitt asked apprehensively.
“Well,” Hank drawled, after an interval, “you couldn’t turn around, and you couldn’t pass. Reckon the only thing to do would be to decide which outfit was the least valuable and shoot it.”
“Please don’t joke about it,” Corliss Adrian said, in a low, throaty voice.
Hank’s grin was infectious. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m not joking. That was my answer. S’pose you try and figure out some other way.”
He included them in a lazy grin and said. “Only about ten minutes to camp,” and swung back around in the saddle. Almost immediately his voice rose in a plaintive melody.
His ten minutes turned out to be exactly twenty-three minutes, as Marion Chandler noted from her wristwatch. Then they made camp in a grassy meadow, with pines furnishing a welcome shade. The packs came off in record time. The cook had a fire going, and even before the wranglers had finished hobbling the horses and putting a cowbell on the leader, Marion could smell the aroma of cooking.
James Dewitt came over to stand by her. “You seem to have stood the trip quite well.”
“It wasn’t bad.”
“You do quite a bit of riding.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know — the way you were sitting on the horse. You seemed to be a part of him. You aren’t tired?”
“Not particularly.”
“I'm all in,” he confessed. “Too much weight to pack around. I’m going to get busy and take off twenty or twenty-live pounds. Been threatening to do it for a year. Perhaps this will be a good chance to start.”
Marion nodded toward the campfire. “Wait until that gets down to coals and you begin to smell the broiling steaks.”
“Steaks?”
“That’s what Sammy told me. Steaks the first night out.”
Dewitt made an exaggerated motion of wiping the back of his hand across his lips. “Guess I'll start my diet tomorrow,” he said. “So you’re taking pictures?”
“That’s right.”
“Have a contract with some magazine?”
“No. I’m free-lancing.”
“Rather an expensive trip just for free-lancing, isn’t it?”
“I don't think so,” she said coolly.
“Pardon me.” He grinned. “I’m always sticking my neck out, saying things that happen to crop into my mind. Did you get any pictures along the trail?”
“No. I’m going to wait a day or two before I do much photography. It's always better to play it that way. The scenery’s better, and the first day’s journey is usually the longest and the hardest on the stock and the people. Packers don’t like to have you hold up the string the first day out.”
“You sound like a veteran.”
She laughed gaily and said, “I’ve been listening to Hank.”
“But you have been on quite a few camping trips?”
“Oh, yes.”
It was plain that Dewitt wanted to ask more questions, but her manner held his curiosity in check.
Corliss Adrian came over to join them. “Wasn't it perfectly delightful?” she asked, but her voice was flat with fatigue.
Hank Lucas, having finished hobbling the horses, pulled a can of fruit juice from one of the kyacks, jabbed a hunting knife through the top of the can, and produced paper cups and a bottle. He mixed the ingredients with haste.