“Appearance!” she said bitterly.  “Do you suppose we’ll meet anybody but desperadoes and Indians in a place like this?  And not an egg with us, of course.”

The eggs referred to her diet, as at different times, when having her teeth repaired, she can eat little else.

“Ham,” she called back in a surly tone, “and hard tack, I suppose!  I’ll starve, Lizzie, that’s all.  If only we had brought some junket tablets!”

With the exception of this incident the morning was quiet.  Tish and Bill talked prohibition, which he believed in, and the tin pans on the pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death.  By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not.  The skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at my leg here and there.

At eleven o’clock, riding through a valley on a trail six inches wide, Bill’s horse stepped on a hornets’ nest.  The insects were probably dazed at first, but by the time Tish’s horse arrived they were prepared, and the next thing we knew Tish’s horse was flying up the mountain-side as if it had gone crazy, and Bill was shouting to us to stop.

The last we saw of Tish for some time was her horse leaping a mountain stream, and jumping like a kangaroo, and Bill was following.

“She’ll be killed!” Aggie cried.  “Oh, Tish, Tish!”

“Don’t yell,” I said.  “You’ll start the horses.  And for Heaven’s sake, Aggie,” I added grimly, “remember that this is a pleasure trip.”

It was a half-hour before Tish and Bill returned.  Tish was a chastened woman.  She said little or nothing, but borrowed some ointment from me for her face, where the branches of trees had scraped it, while Bill led the horses round the fatal spot.  I recall, however, that she said she wished now that we had brought the other guide.

“Because I feel,” she observed, “that a little strong language would be a relief.”

We had luncheon at noon in a sylvan glade, and Aggie was pathetic.  She dipped a cracker in a cup of tea, and sat off by herself under a tree.  Tish, however, had recovered her spirits.

“Throw out your chests, and breathe deep of this pure air unsullied by civilization,” she cried.  “Aggie, fill yourself with ozone.”

“Humph!” said Aggie.  “It’s about all I will fill myself with.”

“Think,” Tish observed, “of the fools and dolts who are living under roofs, struggling, contending, plotting, while all Nature awaits them.”

“With stings,” Aggie said nastily, “and teeth, and horns, and claws, and every old thing!  Tish, I want to go back.  I’m not happy, and I don’t enjoy scenery when I’m not happy.  Besides, I can’t eat the landscape.”

As I look back, I believe it would have been better if we had returned.  I think of that day, some time later, when we made the long descent from the Piegan Pass under such extraordinary circumstances, and I realize that, although worse for our bodies, which had grown strong and agile, so that I have, later on, seen Aggie mount her horse on a run, it would have been better for our nerves had we returned.