CHAPTER IX

A FIRST-CLASS BUCKING MULE

As there was yet a month to elapse before Roger's "engagement with the sun," as Masseth had called it, and the journey to the Grand Canyon would not take more than eight or nine days, the boy felt little desirous either of waiting about the desert country or of going back to the Canyon ahead of time. It was practically a vacation for him, he had plenty of money in his pocket, a good horse between his knees, the prestige of a government appointment at his back, and the recollection of the gloomy Mohave country to wipe out.

The reconnoissance party had left him at Olancha, at the southern extremity of Owens Lake, a land of black volcanic lava and great beds of tuff. After the dazzling white of salt and borate deposits; the great sheets of black lava, and the heights of the Sierra Nevada behind, formed so strong a contrast that Roger could hardly believe that the two were but a couple of days' ride from each other. Towering over all, moreover, could be seen Mt. Whitney, the sentinel peak of the southern end of the Sierra, snow-capped and majestic, and Roger conceived the idea of riding thitherward to gain some idea of the life and scenery of the mountain-side.

A few hours' ride brought him to Lone Pine, where he put up for the night. In the course of casual conversation with some of the men in the little frame hotel, Roger mentioned that he was with the Geological Survey. This announcement he had found it necessary to make in a number of instances, for in that Western country a man's business is not regarded as a matter especially to be kept secret.

"Sho!" said one of the men, just in from a big cattle ranch. "I presoom, then, that you propose to hitch up with that peak-climbin' outfit?"

"Is there a geological reconnoissance party near here, then?" queried Roger interestedly.

"A what?"

"A geological reconnoissance party," repeated the boy, "a government survey."

"Geological reconnoissance is good!" exclaimed the Westerner. "If that salubrious phrase is a maverick, I reckon I'll brand it and inclood it in my string. But there was a bunch here the other day, with three-legged telescopes and barbers' poles, just like what you describe."

"How long ago?" asked the boy.

"'Bout a week, I surmise. An' they can't have got any thousand miles away, either, because, as I understood 'em, they was a-contemplatin' drawin' little picture-maps of the country as they went along."

Roger nodded understandingly.

"I know," he said, "that's just the delineation of the topographical contour."

The Westerner's jaw dropped for a moment, but he was game, and came right up to the scratch.

"Topographical contour I like!" he said. "This is our busy day on language. It may be a new sort of drink for all I know, but it sounds well. I presoom, partner, that you had better lend your valooable assistance to the delineation of the topographical contour on a geological reconnoissance!"

He looked round for the applause of the little gathering, which was readily and gleefully accorded him.

The boy laughed. "All right," he said, "I'll take my medicine. I hadn't noticed that it would seem like tall talk, but that's the way the men speak on the Survey."

"Which I've no objection, son," answered the other. "I'm allers willin' to rope and hog-tie a new bunch o' words, an' I has gratitood therefor."

"You all remember," broke in another speaker, "the time when Ginger Harry's gun-play was choked off by the vocab'lary Little Doc unloaded?"

And Roger, seeing the conversation pass into other hands, was glad to retire from the center of the stage in which he had unexpectedly found himself, and listened for all he was worth to the reminiscences of the days when cowboy life had not been spoiled by railroad tracks and barbed-wire fences.

Early the next morning, however, taking with him a few days' provisions, Roger started up the trail which had been pointed out to him as the one the survey party had taken a few days previously, and his now trained eye could easily detect where halts had been made and bench marks established for the mapping out of the contour of the country. At the same time he noticed that the party was pushing on rapidly, and by this he judged that the climbing of the peak was one of the objects of the expedition.

He had reached quite a sharp slope in the mountain, and was letting Duke take the trail slowly and quietly, when suddenly he heard above him a sharp blow, and then, far up the mountain-side a faint, "ting-ling-ling-ling" and a moment's pause, then louder, "crackety-crack-crack-crack" and then, with a tumult of crashes and whangs, a large tin pail went clattering down the mountain.

Roger looked up, and from the heights above him there floated down a vociferous and fluent torrent of language, which, even at that distance, sounded strange and barbarous to the boy's ears. Using his field-glasses, moreover, he could distinguish a figure leaning over a ledge some distance above, and by the long cue he could see it was a Chinaman. The sight gave him great encouragement, for he knew that the party he was following had with it a Chinese cook, named Ti Sing, well known in that region, and one of the most valued cooks in the Survey.

Realizing that he was near his goal the boy hurried on, and soon overtook the party beside a small river with a swollen stream, a recent cloudburst having filled to overflowing a creek usually fordable. The water would, of course, go down in a day or two, but the men did not want to wait. The building of a bridge seemed almost beyond feasibility, as the banks were flat and there was no way to get across with a rope even, for the first span.

As it chanced, the head of the party, with the assistant topographer, had taken a little side trip off the trail, and the packers were annoyed by being stopped in this way.

"I reckon Saracen could find a way, all right," said one of the men, "but I shore do feel like a fool to wait for him to come up and show us old-timers what to do."

Numberless suggestions had been made, and Roger's presence as a stranger had kept him silent, but thinking perhaps that he could be of some use, he spoke in an aside to the first speaker and suggested to him a possible means, which he had heard as having been done in a similar case by Herold. He gave the packer the idea, and told him to go ahead with it as though it were a plan of his own devising.

"You see," said Roger, "it would seem like an intrusion if it came from me."

"Nothing o' the kind," said the other roughly. "I'm not going to steal another man's ideas and put them out as my own. What do you think I am? Here, boys," he continued, "this youngster has an idea that he says has been proved before. Let's try it. Tell us about it, son."

Roger flushed hot at being brought before a group of men he had never seen till that day, but he spoke up bravely.

"It doesn't seem right, I know," he said, "for me to do any talking, but I know of a scheme that might work here, if you thought it would go. Work it just like you do a canoe in tracking. You know with a rope from bow to stern, going against the current, if you pull on the bow, it will swerve in and on the stern it will sweep out?"

"That's right!" agreed several of the men.

"Well," went on the boy, "it would be pretty easy to get a tree half-way across, wouldn't it? Drop a tree in the river, fasten the butt end to shore, and then let the top sweep out into the stream, fastening the rope when it was out at a sharp angle up stream."

"Any fool can do that," said one of the party scornfully, "but you might just as well be on this side as only half-way across."

"Dry up, Hank, and don't get grouchy," said the first speaker, "the boy isn't through."

"I thought then," continued Roger, with a grateful glance at his ally, "that another tree could be cut down, away up the river, butt end first. Two ropes on, same as the other. Then, keeping the top down stream and checking off the ropes gradually, the current would sweep the tree to the other side of the stream. Let it float until the branches of the second tree interlocked with those of the first, held tight in the middle of the stream. Then slack up the butt end of the second tree, and as it swung round it would hit the bank on the further shore, and there is your bridge made."

"That would read all right in a book," grumbled the discontented one, "but a river like that isn't any child's kite business."

"But I didn't get it out of a book," replied the boy, a little hotly. "Mr. Herold, the geographer, told me that, and said that it had been done on some of the swollen streams of the Glacier National Park in Montana, where the streams are hard to cross."

His former friend also came to the boy's support.

"There is a lot of chance work in it," he said quietly, "but the plan sounds all right to me. Of course, if the second tree behaves like you say it should it would be all right, but there isn't any guaranty that it will. But it's worth the trying, and anything's better than standing here like a lot of dummies waiting for somebody to come along and tell us what to do."

One of the members of the party having been detailed to look up two suitable trees, and another to find out the narrowest and most convenient place in the river, it was not long before the two trees were down and dragged to their respective places on the bank. Roger's friend desired him to assume direction of the work, which Roger refused to do.

"It isn't my plan, anyway," he said. "As I told you it is only something I heard, and I wouldn't dream of thinking that I know as much about the way of going at it as any of you," a modest speech which won him favor, even with the disgruntled packer.

The launching of the first tree, however, proved so easy, the current carried it to its place with so much readiness that all were encouraged. It was securedly anchored at the shore and pointed up stream, with little difficulty. But the second tree, owing to having been too short, proved a failure at the first attempt, and it was not until a tree of just the right height had been secured that success was attained. The second time, the tree drifted quietly down, entangled in the branches of the other tree, according to programme, and the butt being slackened away it landed fair and true upon the other shore. Without delay one of the most active of the men crawled out and lashed the two trees together, then crawled over the second tree and stood on the further shore triumphant.

But it must be admitted that while the passage had been achieved, it was a perilous one at best. The current foamed over the trunks of the trees and fairly boiled through the intertwined branches. Bit by bit, all that the mules had carried in their packs was taken over, even the saddles being borne over this arboreal bridge. Great as had been the difficulty of making the bridge, scarcely less hard was it to make Ti Sing cross. He called on all his gods, in eighteen several and distinct dialects of Chinese, but the men were obdurate, and with one pulling him in front and another pushing him behind, he was at last brought over.

Then a rope was stretched from shore to shore, passing through a loose ring. This was fastened to the girth of a mule, one rope was tied to his head to keep him from drowning and another to his tail to make him keep his temper, for a mule can't get irritated with his tail tied, and thus, half-drowned and altogether weary, the mules were got across, just as the chief of the party came up. He said nothing until with his assistant he had crossed and seen the animals over safely, then turning to the packer:

"Whose idea?" he asked briefly.

The man pointed to Roger in reply, and the chief walked over to where he stood, watching the men chaff Ti Sing about the missing tin pail.

"That's an old trick of Herold's," he said, "but I never heard of any one else using it. Where did you get hold of the idea, boy?"

"From Mr. Herold, sir," answered Roger. "He told me about it before I started into the field."

"Oh, you're on the Survey, then. What party?"

"Mr. Masseth's."

"Then what in thunder are you doing up here?"

So Roger recounted to him his story, showing that he had to return to the Canyon in a few weeks, but that he couldn't see any fun in lying around waiting for the time to pass. He pointed out that he was especially anxious to fit himself for work in Alaska, and quoted Rivers' dictum as to the experience he would need.

"Well," replied Saracen, "I guess that's right enough. You've just come to see the Sierra country. We're not going to stay long on this side, and after I get through with this little bit of peak--which was the reason of the crossing that stream--we shall go to the other side of the mountain, where I can put you on the main trail. By that means you will have a couple of weeks up here, and still be able to get back to the Canyon to finish that bit of work you are pledged to do there."

Roger thanked him heartily, and began his ten days of mountain climbing, an experience utterly new, for even the scrambling up and down the terraced cliffs of the Colorado was a different matter from the scaling of apparently inaccessible crags, where the climber faced no little peril in making the ascent. Further, in order to do the drawing after he got up, he would have to be tied on and have the plane table tied, while working on a knife-blade ledge all day.

Some few days after his arrival, Roger had the unexpected opportunity of seeing a mule train possessed by fear, and watching a mule buck. Mules rarely buck, so the lad was conscious of the value of the experience. It happened on a fairly wide trail, but which sloped considerably to the side of the mountain, and Roger was riding beside the chief of the party. Suddenly a loud commotion was heard in the rear of the pack train, and Saracen and Roger reined up. Duke, always restive and nervous, began to prance about, showing evidence of real fear, and while Roger was a good horseman and kept his seat easily, he could not keep the beast on the trail, and the bay danced off to the side, where on the turf, three or four yards from the beaten track, he brought him, snorting and trembling, to a standstill.

Then he had time to look about him. On the trail immediately above him, the lead mule, bestridden by Saracen, was performing evolutions that would not have disgraced a trick circus beast, cavorting and pirouetting and bucking, evidently longing to bolt, but held down by the iron hand of his rider. Just as the beast was a little quieted and Roger thought of resuming the trail, there came a clattering of hoofs, and whish! a runaway mule flashed by, arousing Duke and the lead mule to a new exhibition of bucking. Roger soon had his mount pacified, but Saracen was getting angry, and was applying whip and spurs without stint, to no purpose, for a couple of minutes later another of the pack train's mules came down tearing up the dust, then two together in a panic of stampede.

All the while the lead mule, held to one place by a grip that never relaxed for an instant, plunged and reared and strained every nerve to unseat his rider. Next came a salvo of shouts and objurgations, and two of the packers hurtled along the trail, sawing at the mouths of their animals, but utterly unable to hold them in, and indeed, narrowly escaping being ridden over by the rest of the pack mules following. Saracen always declared that his mule counted each animal as it went by, but certain it is that no sooner had the last of the pack train vanished in the distance than the lead mule steadied down. No damage had been done save that the rider's hat, though strongly fastened on, had been bucked off. A few minutes later, back came the other men, who curiously enough were in similar case. The three hats were found close together on the trail.

When an investigation was made, no known cause could be found to account for the sudden bolt, except that a white mule, one of the last in the train, had become suddenly frightened, possibly because there was a bear in the neighborhood, and had started to run, bunting into the mule next in the lead, and thus communicating the fright all the way along the line. Fortunately no mishaps had occurred, and though some of the packs had shaken loose, none had been thrown and nothing was lost.

The very next day after this, the mule in question, which, by the way, was the only white mule in the party, quietly slipped off the side of a cliff with a drop of one hundred and forty feet, landed upside down on the pack-saddle, bounced twenty feet farther, and then quietly got up, shook himself, and began to graze. Being white, the mule was easily visible, and as it was seen that he was not hurt and in the pack were certain things almost indispensable, it was decided to go down and recover him.

When this was pointed out, Roger, thinking that it might take some time to recover the mule, felt that he would be wiser to start on his journey for the Canyon, and finding out the nearest trail from the chief of the party, he started back to fulfil his "engagement with the sun." Having plenty of time, he took the trip quietly, reaching Lone Pine a few days later, and making his way south to the railroad at Mohave.

There he encountered a young fellow on his way to Washington with some special news of the discovery of important fossils by one of the branches of the Geological Survey, and Roger, to his surprise, found another avenue of science covered by that department of the government to which he had become so proud of belonging. This young fellow had been working in the bone-bearing strata for several months, and some extremely valuable finds had been made which were to be placed in the Smithsonian Museum.

With this comrade to while away the journey it seemed but little time to Roger until they reached Needles, where the lad took to the saddle again. It was all familiar ground to him now and no trouble was sustained in reaching the little camp on the north side of the Canyon where he had been bidden signal. He arrived three days before the appointed time, desiring rather to be sure than to run the risk of some accident delaying him. He found the provisions cached safely and knew where to go for water. After making sure that the little instrument and the glass had not been touched, the boy having carried the key about his neck the entire two months, he settled down for his three days' wait.

The night before the date appointed, having a vague fear lest he might oversleep himself, though it was a thing he had not done in all the time he had been on the Survey, the boy lay down in front of the little glass, wedging himself in so that he could not move, and having the glass pointed so that the rays of the rising sun would be directed immediately into his eyes. It was not a comfortable night's rest, but the plan operated like a charm, for the sun's rim had hardly more than appeared above the horizon when the reflected rays shone directly into his face and wakened him instantly.

He got up without delay, and though considerable time was to elapse, prepared all before his breakfast. That meal done, he sat beside his heliograph to await the time. There was a variation of a minute and a half between the two watches, and Roger thought it better to take the later time, for, he reasoned, if Masseth was there he would be sure to wait, while if he flashed too early, his chief might not be ready.

Promptly at the hour, therefore, the light shining equally about the edges of the quarter-inch hole, he raised the cloth shutter that had been in front of the aperture and three times let the strong light shine through. He almost fancied that he could see the reflection on the distant peak.

Five minutes elapsed, then he repeated the signal, three flashes of ten seconds' duration, as had been agreed upon. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he saw on the distant peak to which he was signaling, an answering triple flash. He waited the required time, five minutes, then gave the old signal, but followed it by three quick flashes of a second apiece. This was answered in the same manner, telling the boy that not only had his signal been seen, but also that his answer to the response had been observed and that everything was right.

Thus, across seven miles of the roughest country in the world, did Roger receive his official release and message of farewell from the Grand Canyon party he had served so faithfully.