“Good for you! Now wait here till I go up. Don’t slip, but stand still.” And away went this nimble little goat up, up, up; now sideways, this way and that; now up straight; then slanting, right and left, criss-cross, with a jump and a leap, or a scramble and a scrumble, making the pebbles fly downward, and sometimes a big rock, till, by and by, after a while, up nearly a mile, he called down:
“Come on, pull yourself up!”
Again bracing his front feet, the little mountain goat held on to the long rope, the loop of which was over his strong little horns, you know, until the Elephant had drawn himself up.
“Whew!” exclaimed the big animal. “Aren’t we ’most there?”
“Almost,” answered the little Mountain Goat, and up he went again. When at last he reached the top the big Elephant could hardly touch the end of the lasso, and then only by standing up on his hind legs and stretching ’way up with his trunk. But he just could, all right. So up he went, trunk over trunk, scrambling and tugging and panting and puffing, till by and by, after a while, and it seemed like a mile, he stood by the side of the little goat on the tip-top of the mountain.
Dearest me, I thought the little Mountain Goat and the big kind Circus Elephant would never reach the mountain top, didn’t you? I’m mighty glad, for now I’ll have more room to tell you what happened as soon as they saw the nest to which old Hungry Hawk had carried Little Jack Rabbit.
“There he is,” whispered the Elephant, who had wonderful far-sighted eyes.
“Where?” asked the little goat in another whisper, only of course it was much softer than the Elephant’s.
“Don’t you see?” replied the big animal.
“Oh, yes, now I do,” answered the little Mountain Goat. “That is, I can just see the tips of his ears.”