It is rather good fun to relieve the bitterness of the heart.Let me tell you a few more tales of the tenderfoot, premising always that I love him, and when at home seek him out to smoke pipes at his fireside, to yarn over the trail, to wonder how much rancor he cherishes against the maniacs who declaimed against him, and by way of compensation to build up in the mind of his sweetheart, his wife, or his mother a fearful and wonderful reputation for him as the Terror of the Trail.These tales are selected from many, mere samples of a varied experience.They occurred here, there, and everywhere, and at various times.Let no one try to lay them at the door of our Tenderfoot merely because such is his title in this narrative.We called him that by way of distinction.
Once upon a time some of us were engaged in climbing a mountain rising some five thousand feet above our starting-place.As we toiled along, one of the pack-horses became impatient and pushed ahead.
We did not mind that, especially, as long as she stayed in sight, but in a little while the trail was closed in by brush and timber.
"Algernon," said we, "just push on and get ahead of that mare, will you?"Algernon disappeared.We continued to climb.The trail was steep and rather bad.The labor was strenuous, and we checked off each thousand feet with thankfulness.As we saw nothing further of Algernon, we naturally concluded he had headed the mare and was continuing on the trail.Then through a little opening we saw him riding cheerfully along without a care to occupy his mind.Just for luck we hailed him.
"Hi there, Algernon! Did you find her?"
"Haven't seen her yet."
"Well, you'd better push on a little faster.She may leave the trail at the summit."Then one of us, endowed by heaven with a keen intuitive instinct for tenderfeet,--no one could have a knowledge of them, they are too unexpected,--had an inspiration.
"I suppose there are tracks on the trail ahead of you?" he called.
We stared at each other, then at the trail.Only one horse had preceded us,--that of the tenderfoot.
But of course Algernon was nevertheless due for his chuckle-headed reply.
"I haven't looked," said he.
That raised the storm conventional to such an occasion.
"What in the name of seventeen little dicky-birds did you think you were up to!" we howled."Were you going to ride ahead until dark in the childlike faith that that mare might show up somewhere? Here's a nice state of affairs.The trail is all tracked up now with our horses, and heaven knows whether she's left tracks where she turned off.It may be rocky there."We tied the animals savagely, and started back on foot.It would be criminal to ask our saddle-horses to repeat that climb.Algernon we ordered to stay with them.
"And don't stir from them no matter what happens, or you'll get lost," we commanded out of the wisdom of long experience.
We climbed down the four thousand odd feet, and then back again, leading the mare.She had turned off not forty rods from where Algernon had taken up her pursuit.
Your Algernon never does get down to little details like tracks--his scheme of life is much too magnificent.To be sure he would not know fresh tracks from old if he should see them; so it is probably quite as well.In the morning he goes out after the horses.The bunch he finds easily enough, but one is missing.What would you do about it? You would naturally walk in a circle around the bunch until you crossed the track of the truant leading away from it, wouldn't you? If you made a wide enough circle you would inevitably cross that track, wouldn't you? provided the horse started out with the bunch in the first place.Then you would follow the track, catch the horse, and bring him back.Is this Algernon's procedure? Not any."Ha!" says he, "old Brownie is missing.I will hunt him up."Then he maunders off into the scenery, trusting to high heaven that he is going to blunder against Brownie as a prominent feature of the landscape.
After a couple of hours you probably saddle up Brownie and go out to find the tenderfoot.
He has a horrifying facility in losing himself.
Nothing is more cheering than to arise from a hard-earned couch of ease for the purpose of trailing an Algernon or so through the gathering dusk to the spot where he has managed to find something--a very real despair of ever getting back to food and warmth.
