But though this tight-rope performance had given us palpitation of the heart, Pedro himself appeared to be absolutely unaffected. With perfect calmness and unconcern, he turned round and said in the most matter-of-fact tone:
"Now undo the rope and tie it to the end of one of those poles."
As Pedro evidently regarded his feat of gymnastics as nothing out of the common, we affected to look upon it in the same light, so, following his directions, we tied the rope to one of the poles, when the Mexican began pulling it toward him, we pushing at the other end. Presently the pole was so far over the edge that it began to teeter, when Pedro called to us to go slowly. Then, while we pried it forward inch by inch, Pedro retreated backward up the gully until the end of the pole bumped against the wall on his side, when he came forward, keeping the rope taut all the time, lifted the pole and set its end on the rocks. The first beam of our bridge was laid.
The other two poles we sent across by the same process, and then, scraping a bed for them in the sand and gravel, we laid them side by side, two with their butt-ends on our side, the other—the middle one—reversed.
Pedro then took from his pocket a long strip of deer-hide with which he bound the three poles together, when we, at his request, having once more tied the rope to the tree, he laid his hand upon it, using it as a hand-rail, and walked across to our side, where with a second buckskin thong he bound the poles together at that end.
Next he walked back to the middle of the bridge, and holding the rope with both hands, jumped up and down upon the poles, to make sure of their solidity, and finding them all right, he went to the far end, loosened the loop from the tree-stump, threw it across to us, and then, without any hand-rail this time, walked back across the flimsy-looking bridge to our side!
What a head the man must have had! The bridge at its widest did not measure thirty inches, and yet the Mexican—barefooted, to be sure—walked erect across that fearful chasm without a thought of turning dizzy. I suppose he was born without nerves, and had never cultivated any, as we more civilized people do by our habits of life. For years he had lived out-of-doors, always at exercise, used to climbing in all sorts of dangerous places, and what perhaps may have counted for as much as anything else, he was one of the few Mexicans I have known who abjured that habit so common among his people—the habit of smoking cigarettes.
I know very well that I, though I did not smoke cigarettes either, and though I thought myself pretty clear-headed, would never have dared such a thing, unless under pressure of great and imminent danger.
"What did you untie the rope for, Pedro?" I asked. "Why not leave it for a hand-rail?"
"Because the wolves will eat it," replied Pedro. "We will bring one of your hempen ropes and tie there: the wolves will not trouble that."