"Thunderation! I wouldn't have thought it!" exclaimed the hunter, "but I believe you're right, Will! The mules are climbing the wall. Now, we'll see if the horses can do it!"
"Let me start with 'em!"
"All right! But pull hard on the lariat, whenever you feel one of 'em slipping."
Will attacked the steep wall with vigor, but he had to pull very hard indeed on the lariats before he could make the horses try it. Finally they made the effort, and, though slipping and sliding at times, they crept up the slope. Behind him he heard Boyd, coming with the last two and speaking in encouraging tones to Selim.
The lariats were a great help, and if Will had not hung on to them so hard his horses would have fallen. But he was right in his judgment that the face of the wall was not so steep as it looked. Moreover there were little shelves and gullies, and the tough clumps of cedar were a wonderful aid. The horses justified their reputation as climbers, and, although Will's heart was in his mouth more than once, and his hands and wrists were cut and bleeding by the pull on the lariats, they did not fall. Always he heard in front of him the low and cheerful whistling of the Little Giant, to his mules, which, sure-footed, went on almost without a slip.
At last they drew out upon the crest of the slope and the three human beings and the six animals stood there trembling violently from exertion, the perspiration pouring from them.
"My legs are shaking under me," said the hunter. "I'd never have believed that it could have been done, and I know it couldn't, but here we are, anyhow."
"It wuz young William who thought of it, and who dared to speak of it," said the Little Giant, "an' so it's his win."
"Right you are, Giant," said the hunter heartily. "When I looked at that cliff it stood up straight as a wall to me. It was like most other things, it wasn't as hard when you attacked it as you thought it was, but I still don't see how we ever got the animals up, and if I didn't see 'em standing here I wouldn't believe it."
Will, holding to a cedar, looked into the gulf from which they had climbed. As more of the stars had gone away he could not now see the bottom. The great defile had all the aspects of a vast and bottomless abyss, and he felt that their emergence from it was a marvel, a miracle in which they had been assisted by some greater power. He was assailed by a weakness and, trembling, he drew back from the ledge. But neither the hunter nor the Little Giant had seen his momentary collapse and he was glad, pardonable though it was.