“Oughtn’t we to ride back and warn the others?” said Chris.
“No need, my lad; that gentleman, if he was a rattler, has gone to earth fast enough, and won’t show himself till we’re gone. Yes, I don’t think my nag was touched. I shouldn’t like that. Deal rather Master Skeeter here got it. A bite would make him smile and look more handsome than he does now.”
Chapter Eleven.
Ned Sees Something.
“No luck yet, Griggs,” said the doctor, riding up to the head of the little caravan one morning, after many, many days of travel since the party made its first plunge into the unknown, untraversed wilds, to keep trudging on at the rate dictated by the mules, which, laden as they were, could not be hurried. Sometimes when the track they made for themselves was easy and level a good many miles were got over; at others the hindrances seemed to multiply, and Griggs laughingly said it never rained but it poured, and then the tale of miles traversed became very few at the end of the day.
But the American worked harder than any one, and always with unfailing good-humour. There were times when he seemed to be furious, raging out in language especially his own, the vocabulary being wonderful, the names he called astounding in their fluency, novelty, and peculiarity; still the objects of these displays of temper were never his fellow-travellers, but the mules, and as soon as he had roared himself hoarse he stood wiping his perspiring face, smiling contentedly, to say to one, the other, or both of the boys, “I feel a deal better for having got rid of all that nasty stuff. It kinder eases my mind, youngsters, and now look at ’em,” he continued, pointing at his obstinate charges; “see how nicely they go. Don’t you ever tell me that mules have no brains. Look at Skeeter, how he’s listening to my voice, and you wait a moment and you’ll see him begin working those ears of his about. There, do you see? That’s his way of telegraphing his opinions about what he has heard to all the rest. There’s a deal more in mules than people think.”
Be this right or wrong, the baggage-carrying animals did their best when Griggs was near them, and a few absurd words from his powerful lungs stopped kicking, biting, and squealing when a revolution seemed to be on the way, and a fight of heels had begun, to the imminent risk of disaster to the packs.
“No luck yet, sir?” cried Griggs, when the doctor had spoken on that particular morning. “Why, I was just thinking how lucky we had been.”