A second porcupine was treed not far from the first. Roly brought it down at the first shot,--a feat which would certainly have puffed him with pride, had he not retained a vivid remembrance of his late inglorious downfall. They returned to camp in triumph, and found supper waiting. The porcupines were thrown into the fire, that the quills might burn away, Uncle Will remarking that such chickens needed a great deal of singeing. Long Peter prepared them for the stew, and they were served up in fine style on the following morning, with rice and soup vegetables. The meat had a distinct flavor of spruce bark, the food of the animal; but it was not at all disagreeable, and the stew was voted an unqualified success. CHAPTER XI THE MYSTERIOUS THIRTY-SIX For nearly a week, the little party struggled with the most difficult portion of the trail. At Pleasant Camp they had reached an elevation of about five hundred feet above the sea, but the rise had been so gradual through the forty-five miles of river valleys that it had hardly been noticed. From that point, however, it was all mountain work, and they had to ascend three thousand feet more in about fifteen miles, to gain the summit of the Chilkat Pass and the high interior plateau. The trail often led uphill only to lead provokingly down again on the other side, so that the gain was thrown away, and had to be earned all over again. Then, too, the snowdrifts increased the roughness of the path. It was out of the question to move full loads under such conditions, and half-loads were taken forward a few miles and cached one day, and the remainder brought up the next. Some of the slopes were so steep that even the ice-creepers barely gave the sled-pullers a foothold, and often the sheer weight of the loads dragged them back again and again. [Illustration: A CURIOUS PHENOMENON BESIDE THE TRAIL] Under this terrible strain their feet grew sore, and the frequent dipping of the gee-poles, as the sleds dove into the hollows, gave them cruelly lame backs. To make matters worse, the tugging on the ropes, coupled with the usual dampness of their mittens, caused the skin of their fingers to crack deeply and painfully at the joints. Many times the sleds overturned, or jammed against stumps and roots. Altogether it was a severe and thorough training for the boys in patience, endurance, and perseverance. "What will become of Mrs. Shirley's party here, I wonder," said Roly, after a hard day's work. "If they are wise," replied Uncle Will, "they'll stop at Pleasant Camp. The two young men can make a dash in for claims when the lame one has recovered, but those ladies can never stand this kind of work."