“All right,” said Henry. “I’m ready now.”
“Then if you’ll wait here for us we’ll ride back and break camp at once. We haven’t an extra horse for you, so—”
“I never fork a hoss, ma’am,” Henry interrupted. “I c’n go where a hoss can’t with these here ole legs here. You ride; I’ll hoof it. Don’t worry about Shirttail Henry gettin’ there time yer hosses do, ma’am.”
CHAPTER X
SHIRTTAIL BEND
SHIRTTAIL HENRY walked ahead up the mountain trail, Ichabod Crane come to life. His loose-jointed figure shuttled about as if the huge trunk were threatening to topple from the legs that shook it with their gigantic strides. His loose clothes fluttered in the wind, adding to the shimmylike effect. But Henry covered ground.
The four who had undertaken the exotic adventure followed on their horses, urging the complaining burros ahead of them. When practicable Charmian rode with Andy, Shonto with that attitudinized wet blanket known as Mary Temple.
Hours ago the party had left the level reaches of the desert. They now were ascending sharply into a rarer atmosphere, and the yuccas, cacti, sage and greasewood had surrendered to junipers, piñon pines, and an occasional taller conifer. The trail twisted about the heads of deep cañons in S curves, U curves, and abrupter V’s. Now and then a break in the ever-thickening forest revealed the yellow desert below them like a gigantic slice of buttered bread. Birds and squirrels inhabited the trees. Once a big buck bounded across the trail ahead of them, tiny front hoofs touching his breast as he shot himself forward and upward like an airplane leaving the earth. The trees and the wild life made a pleasing relief from the barren wastes below.
For the remainder of the day they climbed, camping at noon on the trail. As the day drew toward its close they found themselves surrounded by a vast forest, primeval as Evangeline’s, with no view of the desert offered. As dusk descended upon the mountains the trail began to grow painfully steeper, and then it swung about the brow of a rise in a long curve. Henry paused and looked back at his followers.
“This here long curve here is Shirttail Bend,” he announced. “My cabin’s just around th’ corner.”
The land rose sharply at the middle of the hairpin curve, and horses and burros panted as they struggled upward. They then reached a level shelf in the mountainside, a small plateau of perhaps five acres. In the centre of it, with the trail leading directly by, stood the tumble-down cabin of the erratic weather man.