“Three thousand feet in less than three miles,” Joe reflected. “Let’s see, Mount Lafayette in the White Mountains is fifty-two hundred feet high, and the trail starts from the Profile House, which is nineteen hundred feet up. That makes only thirty-three hundred feet, and the trail is five miles long.”
Then Joe thought of that trail, which he had climbed only two summers before, and how steep it was, and whistled to himself.
“We’re in for it,” he thought.
And he was right. Ordinarily, this trail, while it is steep and not well graded or maintained, is easy enough for a Rocky Mountain horse; but now, with the rain pouring down, it was converted into a regular brook in places, and in other places, where the rocks were bare or mossy, it was slippery as ice.
“Everybody off, and take hold of the tails of your horses,” Mills finally ordered, after two horses had almost slipped off.
“I can’t walk up here! What do you think I hired this horse for?” Mrs. Jones demanded.
“Well, your horse can’t walk up here with you on him,” the Ranger replied. “I’m not responsible for the weather. You’ll have to walk, or break your neck.”
And Joe could see he wanted to add—“I don’t care which.”
Bob and the girls grabbed their horses by the tails, and scrambled up rapidly to the next easy stretch, but their fathers and mothers climbed up more slowly, while Mills drove up the horses. Then Dick, Val and Joe drove up the packhorses, which, of course, couldn’t be unloaded, and had a hard time. All of them were up but two, and they were breathing easier, when the next to the last horse, on a slippery ledge, bumped his pack against the upper wall, slipped out toward the edge, pawed madly with his hoofs, got no grip on the skin of wet, slimy moss and mud which covered the rock, and went over backward, with a wild whinny, and staring, frightened eyes.
Fortunately, it was not straight down here, only a very steep slope, and twenty feet below was a thick tangle of scrub pine and tall huckleberry bushes. The poor horse tipped over on his back, turned a complete double somersault, and landed crash against the pines, where he lay struggling to get on his feet again. Joe, Val, Dick and Mills all dashed down to him, and one held his head while the rest got the pack off his back. He got up on his feet, trembling, and the Ranger and Dick felt him all over.