Several times Ned had to caution one of the others about undue haste.
“Hold your burro in more, Jimmy,” he would say; “there are too many precipices on our trail to take chances of his slipping, and dragging you over with him. To be sure mules and donkeys are clever about keeping their footing and almost equal Rocky Mountain sheep, or the chamois of the Alps that way; but they can stumble, we know, and it might come at a bad time. They’re wild to get down out of this; but for one I don’t care to take a short cut by plunging over a three hundred foot precipice. Easy now, Teddy; behave yourself, old boy. That’s an ugly hole we’re passing right now, and we want to go slow.”
Jimmy himself was apt to be a reckless sort of a chap; and many a time did Ned have to check his impatience in days gone by. Jack, too, often did things without sufficient consideration, though he could hold himself in on occasion; while Harry seldom if ever had to be cautioned, for he was inclined to be slow.
They often found themselves put to it to make progress, for while they followed what seemed to be a trail over the ridge, it had been seldom used, and many obstructions often blocked the way.
Once they had to get wooden crowbars and pry a huge boulder loose that had fallen so as to completely block progress. Fortunately it had been easy to move it a few inches at a time, until they sent it into a gulf that yawned alongside the trail, to hear it crash downward for hundreds of feet, and make the face of the mountain quiver under the shock.
In this fashion they had managed to get a third of the way down from the apex of the ridge, and Ned, comparing the time with the progress made, announced it as his opinion that he believed they would be easily able to make the bottom before night came on.
“That sounds all to the good to me, Ned,” declared Jimmy, with a broad grin on his freckled face.
“Hope you’re a true prophet, that’s all,” said Harry.
“I agree with Ned,” Jack broke in with, “and say, we ought to make the foot of the range before night, the way we’re going, unless we hit up against some bad spot that’ll hold us up worse than we’ve struck yet.”
“That isn’t likely to happen,” Ned observed, “because the further down we get the easier the going ought to be.”