He led on again in silence, seeing the trail marked plainly enough, and wonderfully straight, the animals having pretty well always stepped in their leader’s tracks. But at the end of a few minutes’ advance at a walk he turned his head to shout back—
“Oh, Ned, Ned, what shall we do? Everything, you see, depends on this mule, and he’ll only keep to his regular pace. His load’s too heavy. We must run half of it away.”
“What! Waste that water? No.”
“But it seems so heavy.”
“He wouldn’t go a bit faster if you poured away nearly all.”
“I’m afraid not,” groaned Chris. “What can we do? I say, I wonder how far it is to camp. Can you guess, Ned?”
The boy shook his head.
“It must be,” continued Chris, as he rode on, wrenching right round in his saddle, and trusting to his mustang to follow the back trail, “just as far as the mule would walk from the time we started till daybreak this morning. Hours and hours and hours, all going so slowly, for we should have been woke up if they had broken into a fast trot. I’m afraid we must spill out some of the water.”
“But I tell you that this slow wretch wouldn’t go a bit faster. He’s walking now just at the same rate as when the barrels were empty.”
Chris felt that these were the words of truth, and remained silent. He would have gone behind the animal and bullied or urged it forward with blows, in spite of his late words, but he felt confident that the result would only be a stubborn fit, kicking or perhaps lying down.