“No; the Indians will take you from spring to spring. They know all the streams and falls in the mountains.”
The mules were laden after a good deal of squealing and kicking, and, during the process, John Manning shook his head, and confided to Perry that the big leading mule with the bells had squinted round and shaken one hind-leg at him.
“He means me, Master Perry, sir. I ought to have got that will done.”
“Nonsense! it’s all right,” cried the boy; and soon after, an affectionate farewell was taken of the Nortons, it being decided, at the last moment, that the captain should not accompany them. Then the little mule train started in the darkness up the bridle road leading straight away for the mountains, Cyril sending a cooee-like call after them as they reached the first turn of the zigzag road, and, ten minutes after, they were slowly rising above the town, which still lay in the darkness below.
The guide went first quite out of sight with the leading baggage mule, the others following; then the colonel walked next, beside his mule, with John Manning behind him; lastly, followed Perry with his mule, and the second Indian came last of all.
The road was fairly wide at first, giving room for three mules to have walked abreast, but their habit was to keep in single file, and, in spite of all efforts on Perry’s part, his animal followed the example of others, and walked close to the edge.
As the day broke, John Manning noticed the trouble his young master was taking, and he shook his head.
“’Tain’t no good, sir; I’ve been a-trying as hard as a man can try to get the crittur to walk like a Christian, and he won’t. One of ’em ’ll go over the edge directly, and kill hisself, and serve him right.”
But the mule team plodded on, in their slow patient way, higher and higher, while from time to time the travellers stopped to gaze back away over the town, at the glittering, far-spreading sea, till all at once, after surmounting the last zigzag up the side of the mountain, the leading mule turned a sharp corner and disappeared from Perry’s view, the others following, just as if they had entered a door in the side of the mountain. But, upon leaching the spot, Perry found that they had entered a chasm in the slope—a huge rift, not twenty feet wide, and made quite dim by the distance to where it opened upon the sky; while below, it rapidly ran together, and closed some forty feet beneath the ledge along which the path ran, and with a swift gurgling stream hurrying downward to the shore.
It was Perry’s first sight of a mountain stream whose waters came direct from the melting snow of the heights above, where winter always reigned, but he could see little but an occasional flash as the mules plodded on close to the edge of the path, which, as it rose, grew narrower and more rugged. And, as they still ascended, and the walls on either side of the gorge shut out the light, the boy shuddered, and wondered whether the way would become more dangerous, for, if so, he felt that he dared not mount and ride where a false step on the part of the mule would send him down headlong from the shelf-like track, twenty—forty—why, it must be a hundred feet down to the stream!