"You can make it in less time, then?"
"Certainly."
"And turn round those corners?"
"'Course, how else? You don't s'pose I'm thinkin' 'bout rollin' down the mountain side?"
I wondered what else it would be without snow on the ground; but the driver seemed a little too short of breath to answer. I accounted for his deficiency in this regard because of the altitude; we were above timber line, eleven thousand feet and over from sea-level. The pines had become dwarfed, naked on one side, and were leaning toward the rocks above them, or, in their sturdy struggle for existence, they clung to the precipitous mountain side like matted vines. Looking down from a certain point I observed a large quantity of the road resembling a corpulent angle-worm in several stages of colic. I could not resist appealing to the driver again; I don't think anybody could.
"Do you go round all those places at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour?"
"Of course."
"And you don't slow up?"
"What should I slow up for?"
"So as not to turn over, you know."