The boy laughed. "All right," he said, "I'll take my medicine. I hadn't noticed that it would seem like tall talk, but that's the way the men speak on the Survey."
"Which I've no objection, son," answered the other. "I'm allers willin' to rope and hog-tie a new bunch o' words, an' I has gratitood therefor."
"You all remember," broke in another speaker, "the time when Ginger Harry's gun-play was choked off by the vocab'lary Little Doc unloaded?"
And Roger, seeing the conversation pass into other hands, was glad to retire from the center of the stage in which he had unexpectedly found himself, and listened for all he was worth to the reminiscences of the days when cowboy life had not been spoiled by railroad tracks and barbed-wire fences.
Early the next morning, however, taking with him a few days' provisions, Roger started up the trail which had been pointed out to him as the one the survey party had taken a few days previously, and his now trained eye could easily detect where halts had been made and bench marks established for the mapping out of the contour of the country. At the same time he noticed that the party was pushing on rapidly, and by this he judged that the climbing of the peak was one of the objects of the expedition.
He had reached quite a sharp slope in the mountain, and was letting Duke take the trail slowly and quietly, when suddenly he heard above him a sharp blow, and then, far up the mountain-side a faint, "ting-ling-ling-ling" and a moment's pause, then louder, "crackety-crack-crack-crack" and then, with a tumult of crashes and whangs, a large tin pail went clattering down the mountain.
Roger looked up, and from the heights above him there floated down a vociferous and fluent torrent of language, which, even at that distance, sounded strange and barbarous to the boy's ears. Using his field-glasses, moreover, he could distinguish a figure leaning over a ledge some distance above, and by the long cue he could see it was a Chinaman. The sight gave him great encouragement, for he knew that the party he was following had with it a Chinese cook, named Ti Sing, well known in that region, and one of the most valued cooks in the Survey.
Realizing that he was near his goal the boy hurried on, and soon overtook the party beside a small river with a swollen stream, a recent cloudburst having filled to overflowing a creek usually fordable. The water would, of course, go down in a day or two, but the men did not want to wait. The building of a bridge seemed almost beyond feasibility, as the banks were flat and there was no way to get across with a rope even, for the first span.
