Shadowy, disregardable creatures, then, as uninfluential as the slicker and myself, may have roamed the valley in times past and left no more traces upon it. We two realising, I trust, our minuteness and unimportance, went on, as it turned out, far beyond the point intended for our afternoon's excursion. In contemplation of the valley I had given the slicker the rein, and he, poor pony, no doubt thought that he was bound for the first camp, there to rest the night in the ordinary course. Presently I found him, his two front feet planted firmly together, sliding down the slipperiest piece of trail we had yet encountered, sliding and sliding till we had got to the very bottom of the valley—whereupon I discovered that we had indeed attained the first camp.
It was a queer, unexpected sight—a few little lean-to tents and a couple of log huts, standing side by side on a flat piece of the valley floor, just beyond the spray of a cascade that dropped from ledge to ledge of the mountain opposite, starting so high up that it seemed to spring from the sky. The place seemed deserted, but while the slicker and I paused to look about us, out of the biggest tent there came a small, silent, yellow figure. It did not speak to me, but only stared, and I, having stared back for a little and having wondered if it were some gnome peculiar to the valley, suddenly saw that it had a pigtail, and remembered that I had been told that there was a Chinese cook in every camp.
'Is this the first camp?' I therefore asked.
'Yup!'
'Can you give me some tea?'
'Yup!' he repeated, and vanished into the tent whence he had come.
By the time I had tethered the slicker on the grassiest spot I could find, that boy had tea ready. He stared at me while I ate it, stared at me when I paid him for it, and stared at me when, having offered the slicker some bread and sugar in vain, I remounted him and set him on the homeward trail. I had not a watch with me. But it was evident from the position of the sun that we had very little daylight left for the return ride. Dusk, indeed, came on just as we reached the other side of the pass, with a mountain side still to descend. Dusk and an exceedingly cold wind—in the face of which that corkscrew trail seemed doubly steep. It was one of those occasions when vowing candles to one's patron saint might have added to one's peace of mind. But I have no patron saint and could but give the reins to the slicker, and he rewarded me for my trust by not falling down till we had actually accomplished the descent and were on the pebbled beach. Then, in the pitch-dark night, we both rolled over together. A match, lighted with difficulty, revealed the fact that neither of us was injured; and so, very steadily and cautiously, we moved on to the chalet, where we arrived to find dinner finished. But we had seen splendid things, the slicker and I.