This second morning out, the Indians--poor slaves, perhaps, from the first, certainly not warriors with any spirit in them--began to sulk. They had risen early and kept hovering together and talking, or, rather, making signs in the gloomiest sort of fashion. We had hard work to get them to do anything at all, and even after breakfast was ready they packed up without tasting food. The air was ugly, for that region--hot, heavy, and without light or life. It was what in some parts of South America they call "earthquake weather." Even the horses sulked as we mounted; but the mule shot ahead through the brush at once, and this induced the ponies to follow. The Englishmen thought the Indians and horses were only tired from the day before, but we soon found the whole force plowing ahead through the dense brush and over fallen timber on a double quick. Then we heard low, heavy thunder in the heavens. Were they running away from a thunder-storm? The English artists, who had been doing India and had come to love the indolent patience and obedience of the black people, tried to call a halt. No use. I shouted to the Indians in their own tongue. "Tokau! Ki-sa! Kiu!" (Hasten! Quick! Quick!) was all the answer I could get from the red, hot face that was thrown for a moment back over the load and shoulder. So we shot forward. In fact, the horses now refused all regard for the bit, and made their own way through the brush with wondrous skill and speed. We were flying from fire, not flood! Pitiful what a few years of neglect will do toward destroying a forest! When a lad I had galloped my horse in security and comfort all through this region. It was like a park then. Now it was a dense tangle of undergrowth and a mass of fallen timber. What a feast for flames! In one of the very old books on America in the British Museum--possibly the very oldest on the subject--the author tells of the park-like appearance of the American forests. He tells his English friends back at home that it is most comfortable to ride to the hounds, "since the Indian squats (squaws) do set fire to the brush and leaves every spring," etc. But the "squats" had long since disappeared from the forests of Mount Shasta; and here we were tumbling over and tearing through ten years' or more of accumulation of logs, brush, leaves, weeds and grass that lay waiting for a sea of fire to roll over all like a mass of lava. And now the wind blew past and over us. Bits of white ashes sifted down like snow. Surely the sea of fire was coming, coming right on after us! Still there was no sign, save this little sift of ashes, no sound; nothing at all except the trained sense of the Indians and the terror of the "cattle" (this is what the Englishmen called our horses) to give us warning.