The dark spruce-shrouded mountains drew close together in the Dyea Canyon, and the feet of men churned the wet sunless earth into mire and bog-hole.  And when they had done this they sought new paths, till there were many paths.  And on such a path Frona came upon a man spread carelessly in the mud.  He lay on his side, legs apart and one arm buried beneath him, pinned down by a bulky pack.  His cheek was pillowed restfully in the ooze, and on his face there was an expression of content.  He brightened when he saw her, and his eyes twinkled cheerily.

“‘Bout time you hove along,” he greeted her.  “Been waitin’ an hour on you as it is.”

“That’s it,” as Frona bent over him.  “Just unbuckle that strap.  The pesky thing!  ‘Twas just out o’ my reach all the time.”

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He slipped out of his straps, shook himself, and felt the twisted arm.  “Nope.  Sound as a dollar, thank you.  And no kick to register, either.”  He reached over and wiped his muddy hands on a low-bowed spruce.  “Just my luck; but I got a good rest, so what’s the good of makin’ a beef about it?  You see, I tripped on that little root there, and slip! slump! slam! and slush!—­there I was, down and out, and the buckle just out o’ reach.  And there I lay for a blasted hour, everybody hitting the lower path.”

“But why didn’t you call out to them?”

“And make ’em climb up the hill to me?  Them all tuckered out with their own work?  Not on your life!  Wasn’t serious enough.  If any other man ’d make me climb up just because he’d slipped down, I’d take him out o’ the mud all right, all right, and punch and punch him back into the mud again.  Besides, I knew somebody was bound to come along my way after a while.”

“Oh, you’ll do!” she cried, appropriating Del Bishop’s phrase.  “You’ll do for this country!”

“Yep,” he called back, shouldering his pack and starting off at a lively clip.  “And, anyway, I got a good rest.”

The trail dipped through a precipitous morass to the river’s brink.  A slender pine-tree spanned the screaming foam and bent midway to touch the water.  The surge beat upon the taper trunk and gave it a rhythmical swaying motion, while the feet of the packers had worn smooth its wave-washed surface.  Eighty feet it stretched in ticklish insecurity.  Frona stepped upon it, felt it move beneath her, heard the bellowing of the water, saw the mad rush—­and shrank back.  She slipped the knot of her shoe-laces and pretended great care in the tying thereof as a bunch of Indians came out of the woods above and down through the mud.  Three or four bucks led the way, followed by many squaws, all bending in the head-straps to the heavy packs.  Behind came the children burdened according to their years, and in the rear half a dozen dogs, tongues lagging out and dragging forward painfully under their several loads.