And Smoke watched him, doubled over, his shoulders between his knees, shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with one hand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels in the ice.

“Carson,” he breathed up to him, “you’re some bear, some bear.”

The answering grin was ghastly and pathetic.  “I never could stand height,” Carson confessed.  “It always did get me.  Do you mind if I stop a minute and clear my head?  Then I’ll make those heel-holds deeper so I can heave you up.”

Smoke’s heart warmed.  “Look here, Carson.  The thing for you to do is to cut the rope.  You can never get me up, and there’s no use both of us being lost.  You can make it out with your knife.”

“You shut up!” was the hurt retort.  “Who’s running this?”

And Smoke could not help but see that anger was a good restorative for the other’s nerves.  As for himself, it was the more nerve-racking strain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive to stick on.

A groan and a quick cry of “Hold on!” warned him.  With face pressed against the ice, he made a supreme sticking effort, felt the rope slacken, and knew Carson was slipping toward him.  He did not dare look up until he felt the rope tighten and knew the other had again come to rest.

“Gee, that was a near go,” Carson chattered.  “I came down over a yard.  Now you wait.  I’ve got to dig new holds.  If this danged ice wasn’t so melty we’d be hunky-dory.”

Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left hand, the little man jabbed and chopped at the ice with his right.  Ten minutes of this passed.

“Now, I’ll tell you what I’ve done,” Carson called down.  “I’ve made heel-holds and hand-holes for you alongside of me.  I’m going to heave the rope in slow and easy, and you just come along sticking an’ not too fast.  I’ll tell you what, first of all.  I’ll take you on the rope and you worry out of that pack.  Get me?”

Smoke nodded, and with infinite care unbuckled his pack-straps.  With a wriggle of the shoulders he dislodged the pack, and Carson saw it slide over the bulge and out of sight.

“Now, I’m going to ditch mine,” he called down.  “You just take it easy and wait.”

Five minutes later the upward struggle began.  Smoke, after drying his hands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the climb—­bellied, and clung, and stuck, and plastered—­sustained and helped by the pull of the rope.  Alone, he could not have advanced.  Despite his muscles, because of his forty pounds’ handicap, he could not cling as did Carson.  A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice less eroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing.  He moved slower and slower.  Here was no place to stop and remain.  His most desperate effort could not prevent the stop, and he could feel the down-slip beginning.