About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat, the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked, "Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad, anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule. The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot, bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the saddle again, and off for a delusive five-mile ride. As Mr. G. Chopper once remarked, "De mile-stones to hebben ain't set no furder apart dan dem in dis yere land;" and I believed him ere that day was done.