"Well, you'd better push on a little faster. She may leave the trail
at the summit."

Then one of us, endowed by heaven with a keen intuitive instinct for
tenderfeet,--no one could have a knowledge of them, they are too
unexpected,--had an inspiration.

"I suppose there are tracks on the trail ahead of you?" he called.

We stared at each other, then at the trail. Only one horse had
preceded us,--that of the tenderfoot. But of course Algernon was
nevertheless due for his chuckle-headed reply.

"I haven't looked," said he.

That raised the storm conventional to such an occasion.

"What in the name of seventeen little dicky-birds did you think you
were up to!" we howled. "Were you going to ride ahead until dark in
the childlike faith that that mare might show up somewhere? Here's a
nice state of affairs. The trail is all tracked up now with our
horses, and heaven knows whether she's left tracks where she turned
off. It may be rocky there."

We tied the animals savagely, and started back on foot. It would be
criminal to ask our saddle-horses to repeat that climb. Algernon we
ordered to stay with them.

"And don't stir from them no matter what happens, or you'll get lost,"
we commanded out of the wisdom of long experience.

We climbed down the four thousand odd feet, and then back again,
leading the mare. She had turned off not forty rods from where
Algernon had taken up her pursuit.

Your Algernon never does get down to little details like tracks--his
scheme of life is much too magnificent. To be sure he would not know
fresh tracks from old if he should see them; so it is probably quite as
well. In the morning he goes out after the horses. The bunch he finds
easily enough, but one is missing. What would you do about it? You
would naturally walk in a circle around the bunch until you crossed the
track of the truant leading away from it, wouldn't you? If you made a
wide enough circle you would inevitably cross that track, wouldn't you?
provided the horse started out with the bunch in the first place. Then
you would follow the track, catch the horse, and bring him back. Is
this Algernon's procedure? Not any. "Ha!" says he, "old Brownie is
missing. I will hunt him up." Then he maunders off into the scenery,
trusting to high heaven that he is going to blunder against Brownie as
a prominent feature of the landscape. After a couple of hours you
probably saddle up Brownie and go out to find the tende