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Updated: July 10, 2025
"I done spiled the head," complained Pete. In the succeeding darkness he heard the faint tinkle of shod feet on the trail. Presently he could distinctly hear the heavy breathing of the horse and the gentle creak of the saddle. Within speaking distance he told the foreman that he had shot a whopper of a lion and it looked as though they would need another pack-horse.
Gregg threw out a hand in command. "Open it up, Edwards!" he said, sullenly. With mechanical readiness the guide alighted from his horse, loosened the cinch on the pack-horse, and disclosed the usual camp-bed. "Put off that bedding!" insisted the ranger. Off came the outfit, and under the tent lay the noble head of a wild ram a look of reproach still in his splendid yellow eyes.
The boys needed no second bidding, and it was not many minutes before they were ready to show how well they could appreciate the half-breed's culinary art. While the lads were breakfasting, Mackintosh and Haggis busied themselves with striking the tent and packing the rest of the camp outfit upon the single pack-horse that accompanied the naturalist's wanderings.
Mustara had a good heavy load he followed the cow without being fastened; the calf, with great cunning, not relishing the idea of leaving Youldeh, would persistently stay behind and try and induce his mother not to go on; in this he partially succeeded, for by dusk, just as I found I had lost the pack-horse with the water, and was waiting till Nicholls, who was following our horse tracks, came up to us, we had travelled at no better speed than a mile an hour since we left the camp.
As it was, off we scampered for the pack-horse bridge, which we left behind us only after many frog-leaps over the obstructing stones at the ends. Then up through the wood we went like wild creatures, abstaining however from all shouting and mischief, aware that we were on sufferance only.
Reaching a little desolate settlement in due time, without misadventure, they limped into it, ragged and dusty, leading the pack-horse, which was very lame. They stopped outside a little wooden store which had a kind of rude veranda in front of it, where the loungers sat on hot afternoons, and a man in a white shirt and store trousers came out and leaned on the railing.
After going a short distance up stream the horses and men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats were drawn up on the shore and left, with a guard of forty men, and the rest of the troops started overland against the town of Old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty miles distant. The three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse.
Now that you are a man you can control that lawless nature better; but as a boy only great activity and much adventure could keep you out of mischief. Time is taming my colt, you see, and I shall yet be proud of him, whether he makes a pack-horse of himself to carry help to the starving or goes to ploughing as Pegasus did.
The hand of man had left no mark there, except the grass-grown pack-horse road. There was no sound nor sign of life immediately around me. The wind was cold, and daylight was dying down. It was getting too near dark to go by the moor tops, so I made off towards a cottage in the next clough, where an old quarry-man lived, called "Jone o'Twilter's." The pack-horse road led by the place.
They were invariably losing sheep, adding to my responsibility as overseer. In September of that year, I had my first experience of shearing getting through 20 the first day. It was back-aching and wrist-breaking work, and I longed for the day when I went out with the ration pack-horse. In those days the sheep were hand-washed in a water hole, in which we worked up to our middle all day.
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