Walter was gazing on the novel scene with wide-open eyes. Already their little store of cash was running low.
"You talk to them, Bill; you say you know their lingo," Walter suggested, impatient at seeing so many of the party mounting their balky steeds and riding away.
Bill walked up to a sleepy-looking mule driver who stood nearby idly smoking his cigarette, and laying his hand upon the animal's flank, cleared his throat, and demanded carelessly, in broken Spanish, "Qui cary, hombre, por este mula?"
The animal slowly turned his head toward the speaker, and viciously let go both hind feet, narrowly missing Bill's shins.
"Wow! he's an infamous rhinoceros, este mula!" cried Bill, drawing back to a safe distance from the animal's heels.
"Si, señor," replied the unmoved muleteer. "Viente pesos, no mas," he added in response to Bill's first question.
"Twenty devils!" exclaimed Bill in amazement, dropping into forcible English; "we don't want to buy him." Then resorting to gestures, to assist his limited vocabulary, he pointed to his own and Walter's bags, again demanding, "Quantos por este carga, vamos the ranch, over yonder?"
"Cinco pesos," articulated the impassive owner, between puffs.
"Robber," muttered Bill under his breath. Rather than submit to be so outrageously fleeced, Bill hit upon the following method of traveling quite independently. He had seen it done in China, he explained, and why not here? Getting a stout bamboo, the two friends slung their traps to the middle, lifted it to their shoulders, and in this economical fashion trudged off for the mountains, quite elated at having so cleverly outwitted the Greasers, as Bill contemptuously termed them. In fact, the old fellow was immensely tickled over the ready transformation of two live men into a quadruped. Walter should be fore legs and he hind legs. When tired, they could take turn and turn about. If the load galled one shoulder, it could be shifted over to the other, without halting. "Hooray!" he shouted, when they were clear of the village; "to-morrow we'll see the place where old Bill Boar watered his hoss in the Pacific."
"Balboa, Bill," Walter corrected. "No horse will drink salt water, silly. You know better. Besides, it wasn't a horse at all. 'Twas a mule."