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Gus Lafee finished wiping his hands and sullenly threw the towel upon the rocks. His attitude was one of deep dejection. The light seemed gone out of the day and the glory from the golden sun. Even the keen mountain air was devoid of relish, and the early morning no longer yielded its customary zest. "Just our luck!"
A few moments later Hazard was offering him the flask. "Take some yourself," Gus said. "No; you. I don't need it." "And I'm past needing it." Evidently Gus was dubious of the bottle and its contents. Hazard put it away in his pocket. "Are you game," he asked, "or are you going to give it up?" "Never!" Gus protested. "I am game. No Lafee ever showed the white feather yet.
Gus Lafee did not reply, but turned away to start the fire and begin cooking breakfast. His disappointment and grief were too deep for anything but silence, and Hazard, who felt likewise, never opened his mouth as he fed the horses, nor once laid his head against their arching necks or passed caressing fingers through their manes.
True, most of the eye-bolts, twisted and bent, remained. But few men had since essayed the hazardous undertaking, and of those few more than one gave up his life on the treacherous heights, and not one succeeded. But Gus Lafee and Hazard Van Dorn had left the smiling valley-land of California and journeyed into the high Sierras, intent on the great adventure.
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