“Hold on,” called the engineer. “We want to make haste slowly. That buckskin you’re on isn’t so young as he has been, and my pony has to lug around two hundred pounds. We’ll get back sooner by being moderate. Besides you don’t wish to knock up old Buck. He is about the only one of these jumpy cow ponies that is safe for Jenny.”
“That’s so,” admitted Ashton. “Suppose you set the pace.”
He stopped to let Blake pass him, and trailed behind up the mountain side. He had headed into a draw. The engineer at once turned and began zigzagging up the steep side of the ridge that thrust out into the valley between the draw and the gulch of Dry Fork. At the stiffest places he jumped off and led his pony. None too willingly, Ashton followed the example set by his companion. There were some places where he could 191 not have avoided so doing––ledges that the old buckskin, despite his years of mountain service, could hardly scramble up under an empty saddle.
Long before they reached the point of the ridge, Ashton was panting and sweating, and his handsome face was red from exertion and anger. But his indignation at being misguided up so difficult a line of ascent received a damper when he reached the lower end of the ridge crest. Blake, who had waited patiently for him to clamber up the last sharp slope, gave him a cheerful nod and pointed to the long but fairly easy incline of the ridge crest.
“In mountain climbing, always take your stiffest ground first, when you can,” he said. “We can jog along pretty fast now.”
They mounted and rode up the ridge, much of the time at a jog trot. Before long they came to the top of High Mesa, and galloped across to one of the ridges that lay parallel with Deep Cañon. Climbing the ridge, they found themselves looking over into a ravine that ran down to the right to join another ravine from the opposite direction, at the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Blake turned and rode to the left along the ridge, until he found a place where they could cross the ravine. The still air was reverberating with the muffled roar of Deep Cañon.
From the ridge on the other side of the ravine, they could look down between the scattered pines to the 192 gaping chasm of the stupendous cañon. But Blake rode to the right along the summit of the ridge until they came opposite the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Here he flung the reins over his pony’s head, and dismounted. Ashton was about to do the same when he caught sight of a wolf slinking away like a gray shadow up the farther ravine. He reached for his rifle, and for the first time noticed that he had failed to bring it along. In his haste to start from camp he had left it in the tent.
“Sacre!” he petulantly exclaimed. “There goes twenty-five dollars!”
“How’s that?” asked Blake. He looked and caught a glimpse of the wolf just as it vanished. “Why don’t you shoot?”
“Left my rifle in camp, curse the luck!”