United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We took our wagon to pieces, and ferried it and its contents across, and then drove our mules into the water. In crossing, one mule became entangled in the rope of the other, and for a time we thought he was a gone mule; but at last he revived and we hitched up. The mules were both pack-animals; neither had ever before seen a wagon.
And the tension had never lessened for this army, what with waiting for the Right Wing, which had not yet apparently stirred from Otsego; and the inadequacy of provisions, not known to the men but whispered among the officers; and the shots already exchanged this very morning along the river between our outposts and prowling scouts of the enemy; and the daily loss of pack-animals and cattle, strayed or stolen; and of men, too, scalped since they left Wyoming, sometimes within gunshot of headquarters.
We stripped down, tied our clothing about our shoulders and mounted our horses again. I wanted Juan to take the lead and let me drive the horses after him, but he thought we had best ride side by side and let the pack-animals follow, so in case of accident we could help each other. We made it across safe, and from this time on we never hesitated at a stream.
Kells rapidly overhauled her, and she had to get out of the trail to let the pack-animals pass. He threw her bridle to her. "Get up," he said. She complied. And then she bravely faced him. "Where are the other men?" "We parted company," he replied, curtly. "Why?" she persisted. "Well, if you're anxious to know, it was because you were winning their regard too much to suit me."
The anxiety of mind attendant on a bad state of the animals is really quite embarrassing, for it not only causes a delay in the movements, but a derangement in the loads. Other animals are overburdened, and there is no knowing where the evil will stop. In addition to the pack-animals, I would recommend the employment of a dray or cart under any practicable circumstances.
The pack-animals were four. A study of Dinkey's character and an experience of her characteristics always left me with mingled feelings. At times I was inclined to think her perfection: at other times thirty cents would have been esteemed by me as a liberal offer for her.
Of these earliest of the desert caravans, the railroad builders, following the same trail and pointing toward the same destination in the gold gulches, found dismal reminders. In the longest of the thirsty stretches there were clean-picked skeletons, and they were not always the relics of the patient pack-animals.
They were on their way to Taos with their pack-animals laden with furs, when the savages, meeting them, after stripping them of their goods, and securing their arms by treachery, made them mount their mules under pretence of conducting them to Taos, where they were to be given up to the leaders of the insurrection.
After having reached a fifty-mile limit from the State line, each trader had control of his own men; each took care of a certain number of the pack-animals, loaded and unloaded them in camp, and had general supervision of them. Frequently there would be three hundred mules in a single caravan, carrying three hundred pounds apiece, and very large animals more.
The Indian had disappeared by this time, and there was little danger of overtaking him; so with the two low hills as his objective point, the Easterner circled a mile out of the direct course which he knew the Indian would take, and when the dawn commenced to show in the east he herded the pack-animals down into a swale between two sand-dunes.
Word Of The Day