'What! go up in that thing? not I, sonny,' replied the old cowboy; 'I don't mind your hanging me out on a clothes-line again over them rocks if so be as you think my constitution requires it, but I'll be dog-goned if I'll go up in that thing.' Now, 'dog-goned' was a rare expression with Dick and was generally supposed by his friends to mean that he had issued an ultimatum. If in the old days at the ranche he had said that he would be 'dog-goned' if So-and-so shouldn't git next day, you might as well say good-bye to So-and-so, for next morning, 'bright and early,' he invariably 'got.' So, then, this rebellion of Dick's was rather a formidable thing, and one not to be treated lightly. Snap tried to argue with the old man, but it was useless. Reason against prejudice never had much chance. Dick never had been a 'blooming balloonatic,' he said, and didn't 'kinder cotton to becoming one now.' 'Well, Dick,' said Snap, 'it's just this. If we stay here it means death--a long, lingering, painful death. If we try the balloon, of course it may drop us like a stone, and then that's death too, but a quick, painless one. We should be dead before we got to the bottom.' 'That's right enough, lad,' persisted Wharton, 'but if that is all that you are hankering after who is to hinder your jumping over the edge here--that's death too, a pretty certain one, and painless, says you!' 'Quite so, Dick, but I don't think the balloon would let us down. Why should it? There is a lot of ballast in. We'll throw that out, and then away we go sailing over the heads of these Redskins until somewhere or other we come softly and slowly down again, safe and sound, and out of danger. I can't think why we have stayed here so long,' Snap concluded, having succeeded, as many a man has done before, in talking himself into belief in his own scheme. 'I'm not a-goin' to say, Snap,' said Dick slowly, 'as there ain't something in your idea; but sailing in that thing don't seem natural to me somehow. Howsomdever, if we can't get away before this time to-morrow in any other way, you boys can try it if you like, and I'll jest try to wriggle through them reptiles down below in my own way.' And that was the most the boys could get out of Dick, and with it they had to be content: though Snap had not the least intention of going without the old man. 'All or none' was his motto, and he meant to stick to it. CHAPTER XXIV SNAP'S SACRIFICE