"Al-almost swallowed them," she gasped. "Oh, Lizzie, to think of a summer of this!"
At last we left the road and turned onto a footpath, which instantly commenced to rise. Tish called back something about the beauties of nature and riding over a carpet of flowers, but my horse was fording a small stream at the time and I was too occupied to reply. The path--or trail, which is what Bill called it--grew more steep, and I let go of the lines and held to the horn of my saddle. The horses were climbing like goats.
"Tish," Aggie called desperately, "I can't stand this. I'm going back! I'm--Lordamighty!"
Fortunately Tish did not hear this. We had suddenly emerged on the brink of a precipice. A two-foot path clung to the cliff, and along the very edge of this the horses walked, looking down in an interested manner now and then. My blood turned to water and I closed my eyes.
"Tish!" Aggie shrieked.
But the only effect of this was to start her horse into a trot. I had closed my eyes, but I opened them in time to see Aggie give a wild clutch and a low moan.
In a few moments the trail left the edge, and Aggie turned in her saddle and looked back at me.
"I lost my lower set back there," she said. "They went over the edge. I suppose they're falling yet."
"It's a good thing it wasn't the upper set," I said, to comfort her. "As far as appearance goes--"
"Appearance!" she said bitterly. "Do you suppose we'll meet anybody but desperadoes and Indians in a place like this? And not an egg with us, of course."
The eggs referred to her diet, as at different times, when having her teeth repaired, she can eat little else.
"Ham," she called back in a surly tone, "and hard tack, I suppose! I'll starve, Lizzie, that's all. If only we had brought some junket tablets!"
With the exception of this incident the morning was quiet. Tish and Bill talked prohibition, which he believed in, and the tin pans on the pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death. By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not. The skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at my leg here and there.
At eleven o'clock, riding through a valley on a trail six inches wide, Bill's horse stepped on a hornets' nest. The insects were probably dazed at first, but by the time Tish's horse arrived they were prepared, and the next thing we knew Tish's horse was flying up the mountain-side as if it had gone crazy, and Bill was shouting to us to stop.