Chapter Twenty Three.
A Ride in Mid-Air.
It turns out just such a night as was wished for—moonless, still not obscurely dark. Too much darkness would defeat the end in view. They need light for the lowering down, a thing that will take some time with careful management.
But the miners are the very men for such purpose. Not one of them who has not dangled at a rope’s end in a shaft hundreds of feet sheer down into the earth. To them it is habitude—child’s play—as to him who spends his life scaling sea-coast cliffs for the eggs and young of birds.
It is yet early when the party entrusted with the undertaking assemble on the edge of the precipice, at the point where the daring adventurer is to make descent. Some carry coils of rope, others long poles notched at the end for fending the line off the rocks, while the gambusino is seen bearing a burden which differs from all the rest. A saddle and bridle it is; his own, cherished for their costliness, but now placed at the service of his young friend, to do what he will with them.
“I could ride Crusader without them,” says the English youth: “guide him with my voice and knees; but these will make it surer, and I thank you, Señor Vicente.”
“Ah, muchacho! if they but help you, how glad ’twill make me feel! If they’re lost, it wouldn’t be for that I’d grudge the twenty doblones the saddle cost me. I’d give ten times as much to see you seated in it on the plaza of Arispe.”
“I’ll be there, amigo, in less than sixty hours if Crusader hasn’t lost his strength by too long feeding on grass.”
“I fancy you need not fear that, señorito; your horse is one that nothing seems to affect. I still cling to the belief he’s the devil himself.”
“Better believe him an angel—our good angel now, as I hope he will prove himself.”