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Flint groaned and struggled up the heights made all the
more arduous by heavy snow. He cursed the sedentary life
that had led him into this physical decline. He knew - or at
least convinced himself - that this would have been no trou-
ble for him a short twenty years ago.
But the hills brought him a sense of exhilaration as well.
The view of jagged crests stretching for a hundred miles,
capped by the snows of autumn; the sweeping grandeur of
the valleys and the inexorable crushing force of the moun-
tain rivers - all of these returned a joy to his old heart that
he hadn't even been aware he was missing.
The sun was dropping over their right shoulders when the
road abruptly ended at a shallow stream, as if a giant broom
had descended and swept the rutted trail away. The bank
rose steeply on the opposite side, unmarked by a single rut
or hoofprint, while the two-foot-deep stream, so clear and
cold Flint could see the gravel bottom, teemed across their
path. Big, fluffy snowflakes plopped into the stream and
melted into the steady current. Flint smiled to himself; hid-
ing a trail in a riverbed was one of the oldest tricks in an ad-
venturer's book
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