"It is more difficult to carry a load down a mountain than up.
I can walk."
Before he could stop her she had begun to descend. They went down
quickly--three times as quickly as they had climbed the other side--and
when, half an hour later, they reached the timber in the dip, he felt as
if his back were broken. The girl had persistently kept ahead of him,
and with a little cry of triumph she dropped down at the foot of the
first balsam they came to. The pupils of her eyes were big and dark as
she looked up at him, quivering with the strain of the last great
effort, and yet she tried to smile at him.
"You may carry me--some time--but not down a mountain," she said, and
laid her head wearily on the pillow of her arm, so that her face was
concealed from him. "And now--please get supper, _Sakewawin_."
He spread his blanket over her before he began searching for a camp
site. He noticed that Tara was already hunting for roots. Baree followed
close at his master's heels. Quite near, David found a streamlet that
trickled down from the snow line, and to a grassy plot on the edge of
this he dragged a quantity of dry wood and built a fire. Then he made a
thick couch of balsam boughs and went to his little companion.
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