I wiped the dust and spume away from Fulano’s nostrils and breathed him a moment. Then I let him drain deep, delicious draughts from the stirrup-cup. He whinnied thanks and undying fealty,—my noble comrade! He drank like a reveller. When I mounted again, he gave a jubilant curvet and bound. My weight was a feather to him. All those leagues of our hard, hot gallop were nothing.
The brown Sierra here was close at hand. Its glittering, icy summits, above the dark and sheeny walls, far above the black phalanxes of clambering pines, stooped forward and hung over us as we rode. We were now at the foot of the range, where it dipped suddenly down upon the plain. The gap, our goal all day, opened before us, grand and terrible. Some giant force had clutched the mountains, and riven them narrowly apart. The wild defile gaped, and then wound away and closed, lost between its mighty walls, a thousand feet high, and bearing two brother pyramids of purple cliffs aloft far above the snow line. A fearful portal into a scene of the throes and agonies of earth! and my excited eyes seemed to read, gilded over its entrance, in the dead gold of that hazy October sunshine, words from Dante’s inscription,—
“Per me si va tra la perduta gente;
Lasciate ogni speranza voi, ch’ entrate!”
“Here we are,” said Brent, speaking hardly above his breath. “This is Luggernel Alley at last, thank God! In an hour, if the horses hold out, we shall be at the Springs; that is, if we can go through this breakneck gorge at the same pace. My horse began to flinch a little before the water. Perhaps that will set him up. How are yours?”
“Fulano asserts that he has not begun to show himself yet. I may have to carry you en croupe, before we are done.”
Armstrong said nothing, but pointed impatiently down the defile. The gaunt white horse moved on quicker at this gesture. He seemed a tireless machine, not flesh and blood,—a being like his master, living and acting by the force of a purpose alone.
Our chief led the way into the cañon.