Four hours from Mosquito they topped the summit of the ridge, and looked down upon a smiling lake three miles in length by one in width. A carpet of dying grass surrounded the lake, near which but few trees grew, because of the strongly alkaline soil. They wormed their way down to the floor of the level mountain valley, and here they loosed the saddle horses and cached their equipment in a near-by cañon. Shirttail Henry guaranteed that the animals would not stray from the grazing ground. Once more he took the lead, and, driving the reluctant burros ahead of him, worked around the eastern end of the lake.
When they had completed a half-circle of the sheet of blue water and were on the south side opposite the grazing horses, Shirttail Henry made an abrupt turn to the left and hazed the string of burros up a little creek. For two miles or more the creek flowed through virtually level land, with mountain meadows on either side of it. Then gradually the land grew steeper, and the creek banks narrowed. The forest grew denser as they left the valley, and before half an hour had passed they were in a country as wild and rugged as that below Mosquito Ranch.
They camped for a late nooning before attempting the fierce climb that awaited them. When the burros had browsed an hour they were away again, up the ever narrowing cañon.
The little creek was a plunging torrent now, leaping over boulders, bellowing madly about snarls of ancient driftwood. Often there stood in the burros’ path a huge boulder or outcropping that it seemed impossible for them to surmount, but Henry always found a way to get them over or around each obstacle. The burros climbed like goats when forced to it. Several times the men were obliged to take off their pack-bags so that they could squeeze through some gateway between gigantic stones.
The party was still in the cañon when the early mountain night closed down upon them. They fortunately had come upon a tiny level spot on which there was room to move about with comfort. Here they camped to await the coming of another day.
The night was cold and still, the sky cloudless. Nevertheless Shirttail Henry set up his rain gauge, muttering that he could not imagine how he was to send in his report if the gauge showed moisture in the morning. But no rain or snow fell to discomfit him, and the weary trailers passed the night in peace.
An hour after sunup the following day they came to the end of the cañon, to find that the source of the creek was a series of springs in a hillside. From the springs Henry set a course southwest through unbroken forest land, across which the going would have been easy but for the fact that the trail led continually up and down over a seemingly endless system of ridges. The party would struggle wearily up one steep hill, only to be obliged to clamber and slide down the other side of it into a deep V-shaped cañon—and then up the near side of another hill as steep as the one just mastered. Then down again, and up again—forever and ever, it seemed.
“Henry,” said Mary, as they stood panting on the top of about the fifteenth rise that they had negotiated, “is this ever going to end?”
“Why, yes’m,” Henry told her meekly. “These here little rises here get bigger and bigger until we’re top o’ th’ mountains. Then we begin to crawl.”
“Crawl!” puffed Mary. “I’ve done nothing else but crawl up and slide down since we left the creek back there. I don’t feel like a human being any more. I’m a four-footed beast. I growl and show my teeth when a rock or a root gets in my way.”