Continuing north and west, the country through which they passed became more rugged and difficult. The trail they had followed came to an end. There was no track, no outstanding landmark of any kind to guide them. For five dismal days, consulting their compass from time to time, the three boys with their packers and ponies struggled on over the scarred and battered face of a land of utter desolation. Gray, towering, misshapen rocks, rising up on every side, seemed to offer them mute defiance.
“It’s as if they dared us to go on,” Sandy remarked. “I’m getting so I hate the sight of them. I wonder, Dick, if we’ll ever manage to get through?”
“Of course, we will,” Dick replied cheerily enough, although at heart he was troubled. They could get through all right, they themselves, but the packhorses——
He looked around at the struggling little beasts, who were slipping and sliding over the treacherous slate and granite formation underfoot. Their hoofs had been worn smooth as glass. One of them had become lame and part of its burden had been transferred to the other ponies and to the weary, chafed shoulders of the boys.
Since morning the two packers, Lee and Pierre, had shown the first symptoms of open rebellion. Neither one could speak English, so their complaints came to Dick and Sandy through the medium of Toma, who acted as interpreter.
“Them fellows say ponies die if no find grass pretty quick. Ponies so weak now can hardly stand up.”
It was true. There was no grass, or so very little, that it provided but scant nourishment for the plodding, overworked animals. The soil was not productive. Indeed, so far as the boys could determine, there was no vegetation at all in that bleak and unfriendly waste. Dick and Sandy pitied the horses but were powerless to do anything.
“Before long we’ll come to a place where the grass grows,” Dick stated, attempting to cheer the packers.
Toma conveyed this message to the glowering pair but without result.
“They say no think so. Many, many miles yet before we reach ’em place where grass grows.”