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Show 294 WESTERN WILDS. to get down ; or, once down, get out again? John smiled at my look of dismay, and indicated our route down a narrow gulch, breaking into the cliff near us, which it seemed to me certain destruction to enter. Off horses, girths tightened, and packs carefully examined ; then walking behind the animals, with lariats attached to the bridle and trailed over their backs, we ventured on the descent; John in front shouting directions, the boy next repeating them, and Espanol third translating them to the writer, who cautiously brought up, or rather brought , doum, the rear. I had made up my mind to this at first glance; for if either horse should conclude to go with a ricochet, sweeping all below him, I thought two or three Indians could be better spared than one white man. The narrow path wound this way and that, to every point of the compass, reduc-ing the main incline of sev-enty degrees or more to a series with a slope of forty-five or less; at times away into the hill, and again on the outward turn, around the projecting peaks. The dan-ger is less than it seems; as if one fell, he would be caught by the next offset, but a few feet below. Sometimes we found a square offset in the path of two feet or so, when the horses would carefully drop the fore feet, having abundant room to catch, and bring the hind feet down with the caution of an acrobat. Two hours brought us to the plain, when we heard a shout that seemed in mid air above our heads, and, looking up, saw three more Navajoes on the descent. They looked like some species of animal clinging to the cliff. We reached the promised spring and found no water. The Nava-joes insisted there was some in the gulch, so we hunted along it to-ward the mountain till we found a little moist sand and green, watery grass; there we fell to with our tin- cups and butcher- knives and dug DOWN THE CLIFF. |
