"Is the trail good enough to make a start on now?" Rayburn asked; "we won't have more than half an hour more light, but I'd give a lot to get off this mountain before dark, and every foot down that we go we'll be that much warmer. We'd stand a pretty fair chance of freezing up here to-night without any fire."
"Th' trail's all right for a good half-mile, anyway," Young answered; "an' I guess it's good all th' way. It's pretty much th' same as th' one we come up by, an' that's good enough, where it don't jump cañons, t' go along in th' dark; but we must rustle if we mean t' do much by daylight."
We were back at the pyramid by this time, and we found Fray Antonio very willing to be off with us that we might try to get well down the mountain before night set in; for at that great elevation the quick beating of his heart added very sensibly to the throbbing pain of his wound. Therefore we lost no time in getting our packs upon our backs, and upon the back of El Sabio, and briskly started downward; and the keen cold that came into the air, as the sun sunk away behind the mountain peaks at last, warned us that it was safer to take the risks of a descent almost in darkness than to stay for the night upon that bleak mountain-top without a fire.
In twenty minutes we perceived a comforting change in the temperature; and at the end of an hour—during the last half of which we walked slowly and cautiously through the fast-thickening darkness—there was enough warmth in the air about us to make camping for the night endurable. But we still were at a great elevation, and the thin air was bitingly keen, and all the more so because of the scant meal that we had to comfort us and to put strength into us before we wrapped ourselves in our blankets for sleep.
"What's a mis'rable two pounds of corned-beef among five of us," Young exclaimed, in a tone of angry contempt, "when every man in th' lot is hungry enough t' eat th' whole of it, an' th' tin box it comes in, an' then go huntin' for a square meal? An' t' think o' that sheep I saw! I say, Rayburn, did you ever eat a roast fore-shoulder of mutton, with onions an' potatoes baked under it, an' a thick gra—"
"If you don't hold your jaw about things like that," Rayburn struck in, "I'll murder you!"—and there was such fierceness in his voice, and he truly was such a savage fellow when his anger was up, that Young was half frightened by his outburst, and so was silent. I must say that I wish that he had altogether held his tongue; for, somehow, the smell of mutton and onions and potatoes, all cooking together, was so strong in my nostrils, and this smell so set to yearning my very hollow inside, that it was a long while before I could sleep at all; and when I did sleep, it was to be pursued by dreams of painful hungriness which were but too surely founded in painful fact. Certainly, it was very indiscreet in Young, to say the least of it, to make a remark of that nature at that untoward time.
However, that was the last day that we suffered for want of food. I was awakened in the very early morning by the sound of a rifle-shot, and sprang to my feet, brandishing my revolver, with a confused belief in my sleepy mind that we were attacked by Indians again; and, truly, my first feeling was one of pleasure at the thought of meeting, even in deadly combat, with men who were alive.
"It's all right, Professor," Rayburn said. "We're not fighting anybody. But I've killed a mountain sheep, and if we only can get him we'll have a solid breakfast, even if we have to eat him raw. He was over on that point of rock, and he's tumbled down clear into the valley, and the sooner we get down there and hunt for him the better."
In the bright light of the early morning we could see below us a glad little valley, in which trees and grass grew, and in the centre of which was a tiny lake. But what gave us most joy was seeing birds flying over the face of the water, and half a dozen mountain sheep scampering away at the sound of Rayburn's shot. Truly, the sight of these live creatures was the most cheery that ever came to my eyes; and as I beheld them, and realized that at last we had emerged from the dreary, death-stricken region in which as it seemed to me we had spent years, a great wave of happiness rolled in upon and filled my heart. As it was with me, so was it with the others: who gave sighs of gladness as thus they found themselves no longer wanderers among the chill shades of ancient death, but once more moving in the warm living world.
The path, cut out along the mountain-side, went downward by a sharper grade than that by which we had ascended; and we descended it joyfully at a swinging trot, with a new life in us that made us break out into lively talk and laughter that set the echoes to ringing. And presently, in a very jerky fashion because of his rapid motion, Pablo piped away on his mouth-organ with "Yankee Doodle"—and this was the first time that he had had the heart to play upon his beloved "instrumentito" since our passage of the lake beneath which lay the city of the dead.