“Nielsen, you gave us a scare.  Please explain,” I said.

“Yes, sir.  Last night I was worried.  I couldn’t sleep.  I got to thinking we were practically lost.  Some one ought to find out what was ahead of us.  So I got up and followed the road.  Bright moonlight.  I walked all the rest of the night.  And that’s all, sir.”

I liked Nielsen’s looks then.  He reminded me of Jim Emett, the Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to achievement.  Such men could not be defeated.

“Well, what did you find out?” I inquired.

“Change of conditions, sir,” he replied, as a mate to his captain.  “Only one more steep hill so far as I went.  But we’ll have to cut through thickets and logs.  From here on the road is all grown over.  About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge.”

That about the turning-off place was indeed good news.  I thanked Nielsen.  And Doyle appeared immensely relieved.  The packing and carrying had begun to tell on us.  Pups ingratiated himself into my affections.  He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me.  We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the wagon.  When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road.  Soon we were halted by thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the base.  The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times had to wait.  We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls.  Brawny Nielsen seemed ten men in one!  What a swath he hacked with his big axe!  When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his mighty heave on a log.  Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the road.  He sweat till he was wringing wet.  Neither that day nor the next would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.

At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending hill, deeply forested.  It took all the horses together to pull the wagon to the top.  Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and men both were tired.  I was ahead riding beside Romer.  Nielsen and R.C. were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon.  As I turned the sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the road.

“Look out!  Stop!” I yelled, looking back.

But I was too late.  The horses could not hold back the heavily laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop.  I saw Doyle’s face turn white—­heard him yell.  Then I spurred my horse to the side.  Romer was slow or frightened.  I screamed at him to get off the road.  My heart sank sick within me!  Surely he would be run down.  As his pony Rye jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off side, struck him a glancing blow.  Then the big team hurdled the log, the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and Doyle was thrown from his seat.