at your company will be
ample to protect the rear; so I shall trust entirely to you. If we are
to be attacked it will be in front; of that I am convinced, though
probably the attacking will be on our part, for sooner or later we shall
find a rough hill-fort, strongly held."

"Hope we shan't fall into some trap, sir," said Roberts earnestly.

"I hope not," said the Colonel, turning his horse and moving forward,
but only to turn his head again.

"It will be stiff work for the train," he said; "but they must do it.
You will help to keep the baggage-men well up to their work, for I mean
to get through this pass to-night."

"Nice job," said Roberts bitterly. "We shall have the enemy behind us,
stirring us up, and we shan't be able to get on without pricking up the
mules and camels."

"No firing yet," said Bracy, without heeding the foreboding remarks of
his companion. "They're getting well on. Ah! there goes the advance."

For a bugle rang out, its notes being repeated again and again with
wondrous clearness from the faces of the black-looking barren rocks on
high, and the scene became an animated picture to the men of the
rear-guard, who lay on their arms, resting, while the regiment filed up
the track, two abreast, giving life to the gloomy gorge, which grew and
grew till the baggage animals added their quota to the scene.

"At last!" cried Roberts, as their own turn came, and after a long and
careful search backward from a point of vantage with his glass, he gave
the word, and his rested lads began to mount eagerly, but with every one
keeping an eye aloft for the blocks of stone they expected to come
crashing down, but which never came any more than did the sharp echoing
rifle-fire announcing the attack upon some rough breastwork across the
shelf.

It was a toilsome, incessant climb for an hour, and then the highest
point was gained, the men cheering loudly as they clustered on the
shelf, nowhere more than a dozen feet wide, while the rock fell
perpendicularly below them for over a thousand feet to where the river
foamed and roared, one terrible race of leaping cascades.

There had not been a single casualty with the mules, and the track, in
spite of its roughness, was better for the camels in its freedom from
loose stones than the former one they had traversed.

And now their way was fairly level for a time, and the descent of the
path gentle when it did begin going down towards the river, which from
the