Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the burro’s greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint.
“Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?” asked Ches, astonished at the demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one.
The cañon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten.
“Say, I don’t like dat!” said Ches. “What’s loose?”
Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy’s face with suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed his laugh out.
“That, Ches,” he replied, “is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and an echo—did you think it was the end of the world?”
“I t’ought it was gittin’ on well past der middle, all right,” retorted Ches. “What ’ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?”
“I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you’ll hear something prettier than that.”
He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.
| “I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up in the morning,” |