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CHAPTER V

THE STEEPS OF LIFE

Buck leant over his horse's withers as the laboring creature clawed
tenaciously up the face of the rugged hill. His whole poise was that
of sympathetic straining. Nor were his eyes a whit less eager than
those of the faithful animal under him.

He was making the last twenty yards of the climb up Devil's Hill from
the side on which lay the new home adopted by the Padre and himself.
Hitherto this point of approach had been accepted as inaccessible for
a horseman, nor, until now, had Buck seen reason to dispute the
verdict. But, to-day, a sudden impulse had constrained him to make the
attempt, not from any vainglorious reason, or from the recklessness
which was so much a part of his nature, but simply that somewhere high
up on the great table-land at the summit of the hill he hoped to find
an answer to a riddle that was sorely puzzling him.

It had been a great struggle even on the lower and more gradual
slopes, for the basaltic rocks were barren, and broken, and slippery.
There was no gripping soil, or natural foothold. Just the weather-worn
rocks which offered no grip to Caesar's metal-shod hoofs. Yet the
generous-hearted beast had floundered on up to the last stretch, where
the hill rose abruptly at a perilous angle.

It was a terrible scramble. As he looked above, at the point where the
sky-line was cut by the broken rocks, even the reckless heart of the
man quailed. Yet there was no turning back. To do so meant certain
disaster. No horse, however sure-footed, could ever hope to make the
descent by the way they had come. Buck had looked back just for one
brief second, but his eyes had instantly turned again for relief to
the heights above. Disaster lay behind him. To go on--well, if he
failed to reach the brow of the blackened hill it would mean disaster
anyway. And a smile of utter recklessness slowly lit his face.

So, with set jaws and straining body, he urged Caesar to a last supreme
effort, and the great black creature responded gallantly. With head
low to the ground, his muscles standing out like ropes upon his
shoulders, his forelegs bent like grappling-hooks, his quarters tucked
beneath him, he put his giant heart into the work. Step by step, inch
by inch he gained, yawing and sliding, stumbling and floundering,
making way where all way seemed impossible. Slowly they crept up,
slowly, slowly they neared that coveted line. Buck was breathing hard.
Caesar was blo