When the rising sun of the next morning had begun to tinge the snow-peaks with rose-color, but hours before his beams could scale the mountain wall of this deep valley and flood it with warmth and light, our hopeful adventurers were awake and busy with breakfast.
Sandy showed himself a much more skillful cook than either of his American friends, and was warmly applauded.
“There’s a difference between fend and fare weell,” he remarked, sententiously, when they told him of some of their troubles in this matter; “by which I mean,” he added, as he saw their puzzled faces, “that shifting for a meal is bad policy beside knowing how to have plenty of good food and how to prepare it. It’s poor economy, I’m thinkin’, to half-starve one’s self. ‘Lang fasting hains’—that’s saves, ye ken—‘nae bread.’”
McKinnon dropped more and more into broad Scotch as he became better acquainted, and his fund of old saws, into each of which whole chapters of worldly experience had been boiled down, were a constant source of enjoyment to his partners.
Breakfast out of the way in a hurry, the three burros (Mexican donkeys) hired to carry their luggage were brought around, the little sawbuck saddles placed upon their backs, and cinched to them with a tightness that made them groan and grunt lustily; then the load of each was placed between the forks, or hung to the four horns of the saddle, surmounted by the long-handled tools, and securely lashed on by ropes and thongs of twisted rawhide, which never break or stretch, and rarely get loose from the “squaw-hitch.”
The whole baggage made about six fair burro-loads, and these were to be carried in two trips. It was not necessary for them to burden themselves with a great amount of furniture or provisions, since the former could be left locked up in town, and the provisions could be replenished when they ran short. Besides, the lads expected to catch an abundance of trout and perhaps shoot an occasional deer or mountain sheep, an expectation in which they would not have been disappointed had the extraordinary affair which happened later left time for hunting and fishing.
The trail was a steep and little-used pathway up the mountain, through dense woods, where it straggled about to avoid rocks and fallen logs. It was built up, shelf-fashion, around projecting knobs, crossed fierce torrents upon narrow bridges, and was full of sharp turns, miry holes, and bad going of every description. Here and there an opening in the forest gave a magnificent view, far out over the foot-hills, for the elevation, toward the head of the creek, was more than four thousand feet above the valleys and fully ten thousand feet above the sea.
Beyond the woods the party found itself on the brink of a deep gorge, at the bottom of which Panther Creek tore down in a series of cascades. The torrent ran four or five hundred feet below, and above them the mountains rose to invisible heights. Along this cliff-face the narrow trail had been carried irregularly and often very dangerously, but the hardy little beasts picked their way cautiously up and down, and never sank too deep in a bog or got too far over the edge of a precipice.
Finally the trail reached the edge of the creek, near its head, and here was a ford, beyond which it led through the willows and over the Aurora’s dump to the Last Chance, whose cabin, perched on a bench, or terrace, was gained by a stiff climb up a zigzag in the face of the rocky bluff.
The burros were turned loose in a small meadow above the cabin, and after a hearty supper the tired boys quickly made beds of boughs and blankets, and slept as their long tramp entitled them to do.