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In the early afternoon, in the midst of a downpour of rain, we crossed the divide between the basins of the Paraguay and the Amazon. That evening we camped on a brook whose waters ultimately ran into the Tapajos. The rain fell throughout the afternoon, now lightly, now heavily, and the mule-train did not get up until dark. But enough tents and flies were pitched to shelter all of us.
The loose bullocks arrived at sunset, and with shrill cries the mounted herdsmen urged them into and across the swift water. The mule-train arrived long after night fall, and it was not deemed wise to try to cross the laden animals.
"So, in a jangle of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and the town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong to Japan when T. R. is at Oyster Bay. I say us; but I mean me. Everybody for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and five archipelagoes around had heard of Judson Tate. Gentleman adventurer, they called me.
The morning on which Reginald Gloverson was to leave Great Salt Lake City with a mule-train, dawned beautifully. Reginald Gloverson was a young and thrifty Mormon, with an interesting family of twenty young and handsome wives. His unions had never been blessed with children.
These were in and under the big white china insulators on the telegraph-poles. Hundreds of spiders were already climbing up into these. When, two or three hours later, we returned, the sun was out, and not a spider was to be seen. Here we had to cut down our baggage and rearrange the loads for the mule-train.
Gato's explanation about the mule-train had quieted the fears of the bandits as to the approach of troops. In some mountainous parts of Mexico the government's troops are nearly always on the trail of bandits and the petty warfare is a brisk one. "Go to sleep, my friends. There will be nothing to do until day comes." "Then, good Gato, take us somewhere off this road," pleaded one of the men.
The regimental camps touched each other, and all day long the pack-trains carrying the day's rations passed up and down between them. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where it was possible, in a few places, for two wagons to pass at one time, but the greater distances were so narrow that there was but just room for a wagon, or a loaded mule-train, to make its way.
His morbid faith would destroy her." As they were returning to the office they met the young driver of the mule-train, and Viola introduced him as "Mr. Ward, of Boston." He was tall and spare, with a fine, sensitive, boyish face a face of refinement which his rough, gray shirt, faded leggings, and badly battered hat belied. "Mr. Ward is out here for his health, also," Viola explained.
The pack-men, however copper-colored, black, and dusky- white were not only masters of their art, but possessed tempers that could not be ruffled; when they showed severity it was because severity was needed, and not because they were angry. They finally got all their longhorned beasts loaded and started on the trail with them. On January 21 we ourselves started, with the mule-train.
I furnished them some beans and coffee for the elder officers and two or three cases of hardtack for the men, and then mounted my horse and rode down to head-quarters, half fording, half swimming the streams; and late in the evening I succeeded in getting half a mule-train of provisions for them.
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