Between them, Tom and he soon managed to catch Juan, when, holding tightly by the reins, the guide vented his displeasure and took his revenge by thoroughly drumming the poor brute’s ribs with a stout stick, after which Tom mounted, and our journey for the next two hours was without incident.
But we were not to get to the end of the day without mishap. The sun had begun to descend, and we were panting along, longing for the sight of water to quench our burning throats, when Juan began to show that the pain from the guide’s drubbing had evaporated. First of all he indulged in a squeal or two, then he contrived to kick the mule I rode upon one of its legs, when, emboldened by the success of the manoeuvre, he waited his time, and then, sidling up to his companion ridden by the guide, he discharged a fierce kick at him, nearly catching the guide in the shin; but the result was a tremendous crack from a stick right upon Juan’s back—a blow which made him shake his head with dissatisfaction till his ears rattled again.
He had forgotten the pain, though, in ten minutes, and the first hint we had thereof was a squeal and feat of sleight of heel, in which, to all appearances, Juan stood perpendicularly upon his nose and fore-feet for half a minute, like a fleshly tripod, while his rider, or rather his late rider, rolled over and over, the centre of a cloud of impalpable dust, coughing and sneezing, and muttering fiercely.
“There!” exclaimed Tom, as he jumped up and began beating the dust from his garments. “That’s four times that brute has had me off to-day. I’ve rid everything in my time, Mas’r Harry, from a pig up to a parish bull. I’ve been on sheep and donkeys, and when I was at the blacksmith’s I rode all sorts of restive beasts as come to be shod, but I never did get on such a brute as that; his skin don’t fit him, and he slippers about between your legs all sorts of ways; but I mean to ride him yet. Now just you try him half an hour, Mas’r Harry, to see what he’s like.”
“Not I, thank you, Tom,” was my reply. “I’m very well content.”
“So am I, Mas’r Harry, only he makes me so sore; but I ain’t bet yet, I can tell him. Come over, then!”
But the mule would not “come over, then!” and there ensued a fierce fight of kicks between Tom and his steed, Tom essaying to kick the mule for punishment in the ribs; the mule, nowise taken aback, returning the compliment, by essaying to kick his late rider anywhere, though without success. It might have been imagined, to see the artful feints and moves, that the mule was endowed with human reason. Tom was more than a match for him at last, though, for, slipping off his jacket, he threw it over the mule’s head and held it there, confusing the poor beast, so that it could not avoid a couple of heartily given kicks in the ribs; and before it could recover from its surprise Tom was once more seated upon its back in triumph.
“I can stand a wonderful sight of kicking off, Mas’r Harry, I can tell you! I ain’t bet yet! Co-o-me on, will you!”
Apparently cowed, now that the jacket was removed, the mule journeyed on very peaceably, till leaving the plain we began to ascend a precipitous mountain-side, the track each moment growing more and more sterile,—if it were possible—grand, and at the same time dangerous. And now it was that we began to see the qualities of the mules in the cautious way they picked their steps, feeling each loose piece of path before trusting their weight to it, and doing much towards removing a strange sensation of tremor evoked by the fact that we were progressing along a shelf of rugged rock some two feet wide—the scarped mountain-side upon our right, a vast precipice on the left.
More than once I was for getting down to walk, but the guide dissuaded me, as he declared that it was far better to trust to the mules, who were never known to slip.