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It was not a heavy stick, but it was strong enough to leave a good red weal wherever it fell. The rough yelled with pain, and rushed in, hitting with both hands, and kicking with his ironshod boots, but the Admiral had still a quick foot and a true eye, so that he bounded backwards and sideways, still raining a shower, of blows upon his savage antagonist.
But scratches made by ironshod hoofs on the rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting of stolen stock up the cliff. Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from the lower cañon twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolen cattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge.
On board the junk, a drum tattoo is beaten and fire-crackers let off, and a dozen men with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream.
No wonder the noise had aroused us all. Ironshod hoofs clattering up and down a boarded verandah is riot a silent performance; and Jack was so cool and impudent about it, positively refusing to stir from the sheltered corner by the silver-pheasants' aviary, which he had chosen for himself.
He saw, instead of the lovers loitering in the Place, a new and greater kingdom, anarchy held down by an ironshod heel, peace and the fruits thereof, until out of very prosperity the people grew fat and content. He saw a boy king, carefully taught, growing into his responsibilities until, big with the vision of the country's welfare, he should finally ascend the throne.
Those that in the passes of the mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen: slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lot of loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They were armed with knives and revolvers.
The showers of bright sparks which flew from the stony road under the ironshod feet of our horses remained glowing in our wake like a fiery trail; and had any one at that hour of the night beheld us both my guide and myself he must have taken us for two spectres riding upon nightmares.
Even when Washington fared westward in 1784, he met at Bath, Virginia, one of these early experimenters, James Rumsey, who haled him forthwith to a neighboring meadow to watch a secret trial of a boat moved by means of machinery which worked setting-poles similar to the ironshod poles used by the rivermen to propel their boats upstream.
"You were at Brandy Station, and we weren't," said St. Clair quietly. "It's our turn now." "Right you are, Arthur," said Langdon. "I mean to take this man Milroy with my own hands. I remember that he gave us trouble in Jackson's time. He's been licked once. What right has he to come back into the Valley?" "He's there," said Harry, "and they say that he's riding it hard with ironshod hoofs."
All was barren and strange; even the granite blocks and kops were rare, and I looked still in vain for some sign of human habitation, some track of wheel or print of foot. The last I did begin to see now; but they were not the prints of ironshod hoofs, only those of antelopes, large and small, and not too frequent.
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