through the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire. He drew back, afraid.
"The dead . . ." he murmured . . . "We have come unto the land of the
dead."
Both stood in silence, reverent, awed, half-afraid.
Then Ootah snapped his whip. He called to the dogs.
"Let us go unto them . . . Let us show that men are not afraid.
_Huk_! _Huk_! _Huk_! Come!"
The dogs howled, the traces tightened, the sleds sped forward. They
entered the defile. The trail twisted up the side of the abyss. Less
than three feet wide for long stretches, the dogs had to slacken and
pass upward in line, one by one. Covered with new ice it was
dangerously slippery, and in climbing the men had to hold to jutting
icicles for support.
Ootah was ahead. At times sheer walls of ice confronted him. At
certain places there had been drifts, at others glacial fragments had
slipped from the mountain above. Before these almost insuperable walls
Ootah would pause and with his axe hew steps in the hard ice.
They slowly toiled ahead for an hour. Then a blank sloping ice wall,
twice the height of Ootah, blocked the path. He grasped his axe and
began hewing a series of ascending steps. He breathed with difficulty;
the air in the high altitude made respiration difficult. He was soon
bathed in perspiration. The moisture of his breath and beads of sweat
froze about his face, covering him with an icy mask. His eyelashes
froze together. He had to pause to melt the quickly congealing tears.
He suffered unendurably. Finally his axe split; the ice was harder
than his steel. He uttered an impatient exclamation.
"Thy axe!" he called to Koolotah.
Koolotah swung his axe in the air and over the dog team separating
them. Ootah leaped from his feet and caught the axe as it soared above
him. In a half hour the step-like trail was cut, and he clambered over
the wall. Digging their nails into the indentations, the dogs
followed. Then Koolotah and his team scaled the obstruction.
Koolotah felt his heart choking him as it seemed to enlarge within;
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