"If you don't mind my saying it, Miss Carberry," he observed, "you're a bit too ready with that gun. First thing you know you'll put a hole through me, and then where will you be?"
"I've got along without men most of my life," Tish said sharply. "I reckon we'd manage."
"Well," he said, "there's another angle to it. Where would I be?"
"That's between you and your Creator," Tish retorted.
We went on again that afternoon, and climbed another precipice. We saw no human being except a mountain goat, although Bill claimed to have seen a bear. Tish was quite calm at all times, and had got so that she could look down into eternity without a shudder. But Aggie and I were still nervous, and at the steepest places we got off and walked.
The unfortunate part was that the exercise and the mountain air made Aggie hungry, and there was little that she could eat.
"If any one had told me a month ago," she said, mopping her forehead, "that I would be scaling the peaks of my country on crackers and tea, I wouldn't have believed it. I'm done out, Lizzie. I can't climb another inch."
Bill was ahead with the pack horse, and Tish, overhearing her, called back some advice.
"Take your horse's tail and let him pull you up, Aggie," she said. "I've read it somewhere."
Aggie, although frequently complaining, always does as Tish suggests. So she took the horse's tail, when a totally unexpected thing happened. Docile as the creature generally was, it objected at once, and kicked out with both rear feet. In a moment, it seemed to me, Aggie was gone, and her horse was moving on alone.