"Guess it's going to cost you something if you pack much pay-dirt out over Dead Pine trail.

Anyway, you'll have to get that grading done before I come back here again." "Get on," said Weston, quietly.
They struggled on; and in another half-hour the gully died out and lost itself in the hillside, after which they made a rather faster pace over the thinning talus.

Still, it was snowing hard, and none of them was capable of much further exertion when, soaked through and white all over, they limped into the lee of a ridge of rock on the crest of the divide.

A bitter wind wailed above them, but there was a little shelter beneath the wall of ragged stone, and, picketing the jaded horses, they lay down in their wet blankets, packed close together in a hollow, when their frugal meal was over.

There was nothing they might make a fire with on that empty wind-swept plateau.
Any one unused to the gold trail would have lain awake shivering that night, and in all probability would have found it very difficult to set out again the next morning, for a horrible ache in the hip is, as a rule, not the least unpleasant result of such experiences; but these men slept, and took up the trail almost fresh with the first of the daylight.