"Encouraging, Giant!" laughed Will. "But hard as all this will be for us to pass over, it will be just as hard for the Sioux, our pursuers."
"Young William," said the Little Giant approvingly, "I like to hear you talk that way. It shows that you hev all the makin's o' them opty-mists, the bunch o' people to which I belong. I never heard that word till three or four years ago, when I wuz listenin' to a preacher in a minin' camp, an' it kinder appealed to me. So I reckoned I would try to live up to it an' make o' myself a real opty-mist. I been workin' hard at it ever sence, an' I think I'm qualifyin'."
"You're right at the head of the class, that's where you are, Giant," said Boyd heartily. "You've already earned a thousand dollars out of the mine that we're going to find, you with your whistling and cheerfulness bracing us up so that we're ready to meet anything."
"What's the use o' bein' an opty-mist ef you don't optymize?" asked the Little Giant, coining a word for himself. "Now, ain't this a nice, narrow pass? You kin see the water in the creek down thar, 'bout two hundred feet below, a-rushin' an' a-roarin' over the stones, an' then you look up an' see the cliff risin' five or six hundred feet over your head, an' here you are betwixt an' between, on a shelf less'n three feet broad, jest givin' room enough fur the horses an' mules an' ourselves, all so trim an' cosy, everythin' fittin' close an' tight in its place."
"It's a lot too close and tight for me, Giant!" exclaimed Will. "I've a terrible fear that I'll go tumbling off the path and into the creek two hundred feet below."
"Oh, no, you won't, young William. The people who fall off cliffs are mighty few compared with them that git skeered 'bout it. Ef you feel a-tall dizzy, jest ketch holt o' the tail o' that rear mule o' mine. He won't kick, an' he won't mind it, a-tall, a-tall. Instead o' that it'll give him a kind o' home-like feelin', bein' ez I've hung on to his tail myself so many times when we wuz goin' along paths not more'n three inches wide in the mountain side. You won't bother or upset him. The biggest cannon that wuz ever forged couldn't blast him out o' the path."
Thus encouraged, young Clarke seized the tail of the mule, which plodded unconcernedly on, and for the rest of the distance along the dizzying heights he felt secure. Nevertheless his relief was great when they emerged into the rough valley of which the Little Giant had spoken, and yet more when, still pressing on, they came to the rocky and hilly forest. Here they were all exhausted, animals and human beings alike, and they stopped a long time in the shade of the trees.
At that point there was no sign of the valley from which they had fled, unless one could infer its existence from the creek that flowed by. Looking back, Will saw nothing but a mass of forest and mountain, and then looking back a second time he saw rings of smoke rising from points which he knew must be in their valley. He examined and counted them through his glasses and described them to the hunter and the Little Giant.
"The Sioux have come down and invaded our pleasant home," said Boyd. "There's no doubt about it, and I can make a good guess that they're mad clean through, because they found us gone. They may be signaling now to another band to come up, and then they'll give chase. You've got to know, Will, that nothing will make the Sioux pursue like the prospect of scalps, white scalps. A Sioux warrior would be perfectly willing to go on a month's trail if he found a white scalp at the end of it."
"They'll naturally think that we'll turn off toward the south so as to hit the plains ez soon ez we kin," said the Little Giant.