th, but turned of their own devilish wills along the
bushy mountain side. As I ran after them the gray horse started calmly
on down and those two girls shrieked with laughter--they knew no better.
First one way and then the other down the mountain went those mules,
with me after them, through thick bushes, over logs, stumps and bowlders
and holes--crossing the path a dozen times. What that path was there for
never occurred to those long-eared half asses, whole fools, and by and
by, when the girls tried to shoo them down they clambered around and
above them and struck the path back up the mountain. The horse had
gone down one way, the mules up the other, and there was no health in
anything. The girls could not go up--so there was nothing to do but go
down, which, hard as it was, was easier than going up. The path was not
visible now. Once in a while I would stumble from it and crash through
the bushes to the next coil below. Finally I went down, sliding one foot
ahead all the time--knowing that when leaves rustled under that foot I
was on the point of going astray. Sometimes I had to light a match to
make sure of the way, and thus the ridiculous descent was made with
those girls in high spirits behind. Indeed, the darker, rockier, steeper
it got, the more they shrieked from pure joy--but I was anything than
happy. It was dangerous. I didn't know the cliffs and high rocks we
might skirt and an unlucky guidance might land us in the creek-bed far
down. But the blessed stars came out, the moon peered over a farther
mountain and on the last spur there was the gray horse browsing in the
path--and the sound of running water not far below. Fortunately on the
gray horse were the saddle-bags of the chattering infants who thought
the whole thing a mighty lark. We reached the running water, struck a
flock of geese and knew, in consequence, that humanity was somewhere
near. A few turns of the creek and a beacon light shone below. The pales
of a picket fence, the cheering outlines of a log-cabin came in view and
at a peaked gate I shouted:

"Hello!"

You enter no mountaineer's yard without that announcing cry. It was
mediaeval, the Blight said, positively--two lorn damsels, a benighted
knight partially stripped of his armor by bush and sharp-edged rock,
a gray palfrey (she didn't mention the impatient asses that had turned
homeward) and she wished I had a horn to wind. I wanted a "horn" badly
enough--but it was not the kind men wind.