After some coaxing and urging the horses
took courage to try the extra step and succeeded all right, when we all
moved on again, over a path that grew more and more narrow, more and
more rocky under foot at every moment. We wound around among and between
the great rocks, and had not advanced very far before another
obstruction, that would have been a fall of about three feet had water
been flowing in the canon, opposed our way. A small pile of lone rocks
enabled the mule to go over all right, and she went on looking for every
spear of grass, and smelling eagerly for water, but all our efforts were
not enough to get the horses along another foot. It was getting nearly
night and every minute without water seemed an age. We had to leave the
horses and go on. We had deemed them indispensable to us, or rather to
the extrication of the women and children, and yet the hope came to us
that the oxen might help some of them out as a last resort. We were sure
the wagons must be abandoned, and such a thing as women riding on the
backs of oxen we had never seen, still it occurred to us as not
impossible and although leaving the horses here was like deciding to
abandon all for the feeble ones, we saw we must do it, and the new hope
arose to sustain us for farther effort. We removed the saddles and
placed them on a rock, and after a few moments hesitation, moments in
which were crowded torrents of wild ideas, and desperate thoughts, that
were enough to drive reason from its throne, we left the poor animals to
their fate and moved along.
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