Smoke Bellew | Page 7

a corner among the heaps of freight, his mind still filled
with the vision of the Indian with the redoubtable pack, Kit essayed to
learn his own strength. He picked out a sack of flour which he knew
weighed an even hundred pounds. He stepped astride of it, reached
down, and strove to get it on his shoulder. His first conclusion was that
one hundred pounds was the real heavy. His next was that his back was
weak. His third was an oath, and it occurred at the end of five futile
minutes, when he collapsed on top of the burden with which he was
wrestling. He mopped his forehead, and across a heap of grub-sacks
saw John Bellew gazing at him, wintry amusement in his eyes.
"God!" proclaimed that apostle of the hard. "Out of our loins has come
a race of weaklings. When I was sixteen I toyed with things like that."
"You forget, avuncular," Kit retorted, "that I wasn't raised on
bear-meat."
"And I'll toy with it when I'm sixty."
"You've got to show me."
John Bellew did. He was forty-eight, but he bent over the sack, applied
a tentative, shifting grip that balanced it, and, with a quick heave, stood
erect, the somersaulted sack of flour on his shoulder.
"Knack, my boy, knack--and a spine."
Kit took off his hat reverently.

"You're a wonder, avuncular, a shining wonder. D'ye think I can learn
the knack?"
John Bellew shrugged his shoulders.
"You'll be hitting the back trail before we get started."
"Never you fear," Kit groaned. "There's O'Hara, the roaring lion, down
there. I'm not going back till I have to."

III.
Kit's first pack was a success. Up to Finnegan's Crossing they had
managed to get Indians to carry the twenty-five hundred-pound outfit.
From that point their own backs must do the work. They planned to
move forward at the rate of a mile a day. It looked easy--on paper.
Since John Bellew was to stay in camp and do the cooking, he would
be unable to make more than an occasional pack; so, to each of the
three young men fell the task of carrying eight hundred pounds one
mile each day. If they made fifty-pound packs, it meant a daily walk of
sixteen miles loaded and of fifteen miles light--"Because we don't
back-trip the last time," Kit explained the pleasant discovery;
eighty-pound packs meant nineteen miles travel each day; and
hundred-pound packs meant only fifteen miles.
"I don't like walking," said Kit. "Therefore I shall carry one hundred
pounds." He caught the grin of incredulity on his uncle's face, and
added hastily: "Of course I shall work up to it. A fellow's got to learn
the ropes and tricks. I'll start with fifty."
He did, and ambled gaily along the trail. He dropped the sack at the
next camp-site and ambled back. It was easier than he had thought. But
two miles had rubbed off the velvet of his strength and exposed the
underlying softness. His second pack was sixty-five pounds. It was
more difficult, and he no longer ambled. Several times, following the
custom of all packers, he sat down on the ground, resting the pack
behind him on a rock or stump. With the third pack he became bold. He

fastened the straps to a ninety-five- pound sack of beans and started. At
the end of a hundred yards he felt that he must collapse. He sat down
and mopped his face.
"Short hauls and short rests," he muttered. "That's the trick."
Sometimes he did not make a hundred yards, and each time he
struggled to his feet for another short haul the pack became undeniably
heavier. He panted for breath, and the sweat streamed from him. Before
he had covered a quarter of a mile he stripped off his woollen shirt and
hung it on a tree. A little later he discarded his hat. At the end of half a
mile he decided he was finished. He had never exerted himself so in his
life, and he knew that he was finished. As he sat and panted, his gaze
fell upon the big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt.
"Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it.
He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the underbush.
And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up trail and down, he
noted that the other tender-feet were beginning to shed their shooting
irons.
His short hauls decreased. At times a hundred feet was all he could
stagger, and then the ominous pounding of his heart against his ear-
drums and the sickening totteriness of his knees compelled him to rest.
And his rests grew longer. But his mind was busy. It was a
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