“I hope so,” replied Sidney; “a long mountain tramp is bad enough without having to watch out all the time for highwaymen.”
“I don’t believe they would have come out so far as this, anyway. There were plenty of good places to hold us up back on the road. What do you say to making camp? I’m dead tired.”
“I’m ready to stop. If we don’t get too tired to-day we’ll travel better to-morrow.”
“Yes, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on ad infinitum. I guess it will take us ad infinitum to get through.”
“It won’t do for us to get discouraged at this stage of the game, Ray.”
“I’m not discouraged; I’m only ready to quit for the night, and here’s a good place.”
The travelers were following up a ravine through which a small stream flowed, a tributary of the larger stream on which Timour Khan Shoura was situated. At the point where Raymond proposed to stop, the wall of the ravine was a rocky bluff that rose nearly perpendicularly. A short spur jutted out, forming a small cove which faced up the ravine and made a well-sheltered spot. Across to the other side the distance was perhaps two hundred yards, and midway flowed the stream. About half a mile farther up, the walls of the ravine drew together until a narrow gorge was formed.
The boys unslung their blanket rolls and threw themselves down on the ground with exclamations of relief. The disturbance of the night before, with the nervous strain and consequent loss of sleep, was a greater tax on their strength than they had realized at the time. All day they had been keyed up by the expectation of trouble, which they had been braced to meet and defeat. When the necessity for alertness, as they supposed, was removed, and the tension was relaxed, they settled down, feeling too languid to exert themselves further.
Raymond declared that he would rather loaf than eat, and he didn’t care if he never ate again if he only got well rested. That was the way they felt when they stopped, but a very little rest will suffice to make healthy boys conscious of gnawing hunger, especially when they have eaten very little through the day, as was the case with Sidney and Raymond.
Soon both of them began to feel a strong desire to explore the lunch-bags, but they remembered how dry that lunch was, and how difficult it would be to eat it without something to wash it down. Raymond proposed that they move down to the stream and eat their supper there where the water was handy, but Sidney told his brother to stay where he was and he would take a large cup with which they had provided themselves and bring water up.