"Well, yes, just the very least bit in the world, perhaps, for some people!" answered the wild fellow; and Townsend fancied that he caught him trying, at the moment, to catch a glimpse, unseen by Frank Vanderlyn, under the hood of Clara, who was not very far from him. If he did make the attempt, he failed, for the young girl dared not or would not expose her face. "But come, Townsend," Rowan added, "will you not push on with me a little further ahead and let these slow coaches come up at their leisure?"
"At your rate of progress? No," laughed Townsend. "I am not a very bad rider, I believe, but I have never practised in a circus or on a prairie. Go ahead, if you are in a hurry; that is, provided you know which end is going foremost!"
"Found another place where you will not follow me, eh, old boy!" rattled the Illinoisan, with a reference which the other easily understood. "Well, I will see you by-and-bye, then. Go along, Bay Beelzebub!" and the next moment, darting by the centre line and taking precedence even of the leading guide, in a path that was literally nothing but a three-cornered trough, he was to be seen ascending the next rise, his horse trotting along riderless, and himself springing from crag to crag beside the path, his hand upon the animal's back and the reins lying loose on its neck. He had alighted, of course, without checking the speed of the horse in any degree.
But a few minutes later, and when the cavalcade had reached the top of Mount Clinton and was coming out from the gloom of the heavy woods into the partial sunshine,—they saw the odd equestrian riding over a portion of road that was only moderately bad, standing erect on his horse's back, supported by the reins and his own powers of balancing,—and heard his deep, cheery voice ringing out in a song that seemed as complete a medley as his own character. It may be permissible to put upon record one of the stanzas, which some of those nearest him caught and remembered:
"The heart bowed down by weight of wo—
When comin' thro' the rye?
If I had a donkey wot wouldn't go—
Good-bye, my love, good-bye!
I see them on their winding way:
Old clothes, old clothes to sell!
So let's be happy while we may—
Lost Isabel!"
Still later, the riders were all thrown into momentary horror by coming upon him, as they rounded the head of a gorge near the top of Mount Prospect,—his horse on a walk, and himself hanging over one side, apparently by the heels. The impression prevailed that he must have been knocked senseless by a limb, in some of his pranks, and got his feet fatally entangled in the stirrups,—the result of which impression was that a sudden scream, in a woman's voice, burst out from some portion of the line, but so instantaneously suppressed that no one could trace it. It turned out that in this last operation, so far from being killed, he was only practising the Indian mode of hanging beside his horse, supported by one hand at the neck and one foot over the saddle, after the manner of the wild tribes of the Plains when throwing the horse as a shield between themselves and the shot of a pursuer!
After a time, however, the reckless fellow seemed to have grown tired of his humor; for, as the long line crossed over the peak of Prospect to Monroe, and the north wind and the sun had so driven away the clouds that the riders began to realize the glorious prospect opening upon them on every hand,—he took his place in the line, next to his deserted comrade Townsend, sat his horse like a Christian, and joined in the bursts of admiration vented on all sides, with an enthusiasm which showed that the scenery had never palled upon him by familiarity.
And what views indeed were those that burst upon them as they crossed from Franklin to Monroe, and that sea of which the stiffened waves were mountains stretched out for an hundred miles in every direction! Some there were, in that line, who had stood on the prouder and more storied peaks of Europe, and yet remembered nothing to diminish the glory of that hour. How the deep gorges slept full of warm sunlight, and how the dark shadows flitted over them, and flickered, and thinned, and faded, as one by one the light clouds were driven southward by the wind! With what a shudder, passing over the narrow ridge or back-bone connecting Monroe and Franklin, they looked down into "Oakes' Gulf" on the right and the "Gulf of Mexico" on the left, only separated by a yard of bushy rock from a descent of three thousand feet on one side, and by less than three yards of slippery stone from more than two thousand feet on the other!
The path is a sort of narrow trough, rough enough, but quite as safe, and to those who keep it there is not the least possible danger. Indeed the rider, half hidden in the trough, scarcely knows the fearful narrowness of the bridge over which he is passing; and thousands cross this pass and recross it, and bring away no idea of the sensation that may be gained by a little imprudent hanging over the verge on either side! None of the riders in that cavalcade went back to their beds at the Crawford without a much more intimate knowledge of the capabilities of that situation; but of this in due time.
It is impossible for any one who has never made a similar ascent, or who has only ascended with a much smaller number, to conceive the appearance made by that score of equestrians at various points when crossing the open but uneven peaks in the last approach to Washington. Varied in stature, sex and costume, and all sufficiently outre to astonish if not to horrify,—what views the leading riders of the line could catch at times, looking back at the motley line! Some half buried in the trough of the path or midway in a gulch, so that only the head would be visible; others perched on the very top of a huge boulder, ascending or descending; some clinging close to mane or neck as the horse scrambled up an ascent of forty degrees; others lying well back on the saddle when descending a declivity of the same suddenness. What dreams of the Alps and the Apennines there are in such ascents—dreams of the toilers over St. Gothard and the muleteers of the Pyrenees—dreams of memory pleasant to those who have such past experiences to look back upon, and substitutes no less pleasant to many who long for glances at other lands but must die with only that far-off glimpse of the fulness of travel which Moses caught from the hills of the Moabites over that inheritance of his race upon which he was never to enter.