"I'll manage the brute all right long before we get to La Paz," declared Dacres stoutly. "Gee up, you rascal!"
Evidently the Valderian mule strongly objected to being urged on in English, for his hind-quarters suddenly reared. Dacres found himself rising in the air. Clearing the pommel by a few inches he alighted on the animal's crupper, whence he cannoned off into a particularly prickly clump of cacti.
Leaping from his saddle Henri handed the reins to his companion, then devoting his attention to the refractory mule he made it trot round and round in a small circle until the youth was almost ready to drop with sheer giddiness. This treatment also proved most subduing to the mule, for from that time Dacres had no further trouble.
The road to La Paz was with few exceptions mostly down hill. In places it wound round forbidding spurs of the mountains, where a false step would send animal and rider into the almost fathomless depths below.
So narrow was the track that Dacres wondered what would happen if they met persons coming in the opposite direction.
"That is easily managed," replied Henri when his companion expressed his doubts. "We would dismount. The other travellers would do likewise. We speak with them; they speak with us. There is no hurry in these parts. Then the mules going that way would crouch down, and the mules coming this way would step over them. It is so simple when one knows how."
"Thanks, I would rather not have any," remarked Dacres, and later on he reiterated his thanks when he found himself once more in open country.
Feeling so stiff that he could scarcely dismount Dacres arrived at La Paz. The mules were handed over to the care of a most villainous-looking innkeeper, and their baggage given to four miserable-looking Indians, who for a few centavos could be engaged to act as servants.
While waiting for the train to start—it would be a fortunate event if it left the station within an hour of the supposed time—Henri, who spoke Spanish excellently, made several judicious inquiries of the men who were loafing about—for leaning against the adobe walls and smoking huge cigars seemed the total occupation of the visible inhabitants of La Paz.
When at length the train started on its journey to the capital, young de la Fosse had an opportunity of communicating to his companion the news he had gathered from the loungers at the station.