They drew their breath heavily; the sweat of effort dripped from them; but they toiled upward, with tense faces and aching limbs.

The cache could not be very far away, and they realized that if once they lay down they might never commence the march again.
By and by the creek seemed to vanish, and its roar died away, while after that they wandered, still ascending, apparently for hours among dim spires of trees, until the path once more dipped sharply beneath their feet.

They had traversed a wider, shallower valley between the spur and the parent range.

Weston was afterward quite sure of that, for it had a great shadowy wall of rock on one hand of it.
"We are coming down upon the cache.

We have crossed the neck," he said.
They blundered downward, walking now with half-closed eyes, and sometimes for a few moments with them shut altogether.