Neither he nor I, each for our own reasons, ate any breakfast. My belongings I allowed him to pack on his horse with his own, so that I might not be burdened with them, the chance of a tussle with Canlan being still in my mind. Then, after we had extinguished the fire, a thought came to me. It was when I saw that he was going to strike directly uphill through the forest that I scented an excuse to get back to my comrades. True, my hope that they lived was now pretty nigh at ebb, for I argued to myself that if life was in them, they would already have managed to follow us. Aye! I believed that either of them, supposing even that he could not stand, would have _crawled_ along our trail at the first light of day, bent upon vengeance; for I had learnt to know them both as desperate men—though to one of them, despite what I knew of his life, I had grown exceedingly attached. "I ’ll go back to our old camp," said I, "and bring along an axe if you are going right up that way. We may need it to clear a way for the horse." He wheeled about. "Say!" he said. "What are you so struck on goin’ back to your camp for. Guess I ’ll come with you and see jest what you want." He looked me so keenly in the eye that I said at once, knowing that to object to his presence would be the worst attitude possible: "Come, then," and stepped out; but when he saw that I was not averse to his company he cried out: "No, no. I have an axe here that will serve the turn if we need to do any cutting. But I reckon we won’t need to use an axe none. It’s up this here dry watercourse we go, and there won’t be much clearin’ wanted here." It was now broad day, and as I turned to follow Canlan again I gave up my old friends for dead. The man’s short, broad back and childish legs, and the whole shape of him, seemed to combine to raise my gorge. "I would be liker a man," I thought, "if I struck this reptile dead." And the thought was scarce come into my mind and must, I think, have been glittering in my eyes, when he flashed around on me his colourless face, and said he: "Remember, I trust my life to you. I take it that you ’ve agreed to my offer of last night to go half shares on this. God knows you ’ll have to look after me by nightfall, this blessed day—unless there ’s maybe a tot o’ drink in that cabin." At the thought he absolutely screamed: "A tot o’ drink! A tot o’ drink!" and away he went with a sign to me to follow, scrambling up the watercourse before his horse, which followed with plodding hoofs, head rising and falling doggedly, and long tail swishing left and right. I brought up the rear. And thus we climbed the greater part of the forenoon, with occasional rests to regain our wind, till at last we came out on the bald, shorn, last crest of the mountain. Canlan marched the pony side on to the hill to breathe; and he himself, blowing the breath from him in gusts and sniffing a deal, pointed to the long, black hill-top stretching above us.