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Rh special pride in him. Great heavens, what a gait! He had traveled so long in the cart that the steady jolt had communicated itself to his spine, and become chronic. At every step he jerked his back up, as if expecting to feel the girth-strap strike him underneath, and neither curses nor blows—and I labored conscientiously to earn a reputation for liberality with both that night—would induce him for a moment to recognize the fact that he was out of the shafts, and abandon his eternal hippytyhop. When I started out, there were hard lumps in the saddle, as large as chestnuts; before the twelve miles were half completed, the lumps had grown to the size of paving-stones, and awfully sharp-edged and rasping. The snow which had just fallen filled the trail, but the old snow underneath being hard-packed, and the trees along the route well blazed, I had no difficulty in keeping in the right track most of the time. But when about three miles from my place of destination, as nearly as I could guess, clouds obscured the moon for a time, and I lost the road. I kept on as well as I knew how, guessing at the location of Camp No. 10; and, after rolling down the steep side of a ravine, and working half an hour to get old Jerky back upon the ridge, filling my overshoes with snow, and fairly exhausting myself in floundering through the drifts, I was rewarded with the sight of lights in some cabins half a mile away. Not doubting that this was Camp No. 10, I rounded a small cañon, worked my way over a point of rocks, Jerky stumbling and falling repeatedly, and reached the cabins at half past twelve o'clock.