It was only beginning to get light when all set to loading up the mules, to find it nearly as hard a task as before; but it was mastered, a sharp lookout given round to make sure that nothing was left behind, and then the order was given, “Forward!” Griggs led off once more, with the biting mule’s bell jingling, and the low brush, wet with dew, giving out a peculiar rustling as it was trampled down or passed through, the direction of the hill being determined by compass, the result of their leader’s observation taken the day before.
But soon after the darkness grew grey, there was a faint band visible in the heavens which gradually broadened, trees started into view to right and left, and after progressing some distance in silence, Chris and Ned, who had taken up their positions on starting right and left of Griggs, began to find their tongues and make remarks about the faint streaks of orange colour which lit up the zenith. Soon after it was as if the coming light of day was illumining them as well as the landscape, and they ended by asking questions and then talking loudly about what had passed in the night.
Griggs was ready enough to reply in a bantering, boyish spirit in response to one of Chris’s questions.
“Yes,” he said; “your dad roused me up out of about the most delicious sleep I ever remember to have had. Oh, it’s just grand sleeping out in the open. You have so much room to breathe.”
“Why, you slept in the house place the same as we did,” cried Ned. “I saw where you lay down.”
“Likely enough, but you didn’t see me get up again. It was too hot and stuffy in there, with things creeping into your hair and ears. I soon got up and shook them off so as to go and pick a place near where the doctor was watching, so that he should know where to find me. Then I lay down on one of nature’s own spring mattresses, made by spreading a blanket over the sage-brush, and the next minute I was asleep.”
“But suppose there had been a rattler under where you lay down?” cried Ned.
“Well, then he’d have just had time to take one bite at the blanket and fill his teeth full of wool before I’d squeezed him flat. I weigh nigh upon twelve stone, horseman’s weight, and that would have taken all the music out of his tail if he’d been there. But don’t you make any mistake about those gentlemen; they’ve an ugly way of biting if they’re obliged, but from what I know, the first thing a rattler does when he hears feet coming is to take himself away somewhere so that no one shall tread on his music.”
It was then that Chris annoyed his companion by relating the night alarm, though Ned was ready enough to join in the laugh against himself.
“Say,” said Griggs suddenly, as they passed a clump of trees standing like an island upon a little elevation above the monotonous plain which had succeeded the oasis where the fruit-farm lay in the solitude, and he pointed off to his left.