In this fashion they had managed to get a third of the way down from the apex of the ridge, and Ned, comparing the time with the progress made, announced it as his opinion that he believed they would be easily able to make the bottom before night came on. "That sounds all to the good to me, Ned," declared Jimmy, with a broad grin on his freckled face. "Hope you're a true prophet, that's all," said Harry. "I agree with Ned," Jack broke in with, "and say, we ought to make the foot of the range before night, the way we're going, unless we hit up against some bad spot that'll hold us up worse than we've struck yet." "That isn't likely to happen," Ned observed, "because the further down we get the easier the going ought to be." "But I notice that the holes are just as deep," Harry told him. "And a fall would jolt a feller as hard too, seems like," Jimmy admitted as he craned his neck to look over at a place where the trail was only a few feet wide with a blank wall on the right and an empty void on the left. Harry nervously caught his breath, and called out: "Better be careful there, Jimmy, how you bend over and look down. You might get dizzy and take a lurch or the frisky burro give a lug just then and upset you. We all think too much of you to want to gather up your remains down at the bottom of a precipice." Jimmy laughed and seemed pleased at the compliment. He did not again bother about looking over, but occupied himself with managing his pack animal, which kept showing an increasing desire to hasten. At one point Ned had stopped to tighten the ropes that held the pack on his burro, and in some manner Jimmy managed to get at the head of the little procession that wound, single file, down that steep mountain trail. It was Ned's intention to assume the lead again at the first opportunity, when he could pass the others. Meantime he thought he could keep an observant eye on Jimmy, so as to restrain him in case he began to show any sign of rashness. After all it was not so much Jimmy's fault that it happened, but the fact that his burro had quite lost its head in the growing desire to get down to the green pastures from which it had been debarred so very long, and for which it was undoubtedly hungering greatly. That the unlucky animal should chance to make that stumble just at the time of passing another narrow place in the trail, where the conditions again caused them to move in single file, was one of those strange happenings which sometimes spring unannounced upon the unwary traveler.