out price, if you permit me. With the packers and
guide you can settle among yourselves."

Lighted to bed by his firefly lantern, that night Charley slept between
sheets, under a mosquito-net canopy. He slept soundly, but he dreamed
of being a pirate, and capturing a long treasure train of mules piled
high with golden bars and shining pearls and rubies on the way from old
Panama.

X

ALMOST LEFT BEHIND

Don Antonio proved as good as his word. After the early breakfast, at
which all the family hospitably presided, back of the house were found
waiting three saddle horses, and two bullocks for pack animals. The
trunk was balanced on the broad back of one bullock, and firmly lashed
there; considerable of a trick it was, too, to fasten it in place on
the rolling hide, but Don Antonio's packers did the job in short order.
On the other bullock were lashed the bedding rolls. Now there remained
only to bid good-bye to host and hostess, pay off Maria and Francisco,
thank everybody, mount and follow the guide to Panama.

Maria and Francisco refused to accept anything extra for their faithful
services; so did Angel and Ambrosio, Captain Crosby's boatmen. They
shook their heads. "No, we may be black, but we are very much
gentlemen. When Americans treat us right, we treat them right," they
asserted.

"It is well that you have no ladies in your party," vouchsafed Don
Antonio. "The trip is hard for ladies, senors. They must either ride
astride, through rain and mud, or trust themselves to chairs upon the
backs of natives. _Sellero_ do we call that kind of a contrivance."

And when Charley had seen the road, he was rather glad, after all, that
his mother had not come. However, as Don Antonio remarked, "women had
gone that way, and many others probably would do the same." Charley
felt certain that his mother could get through, if any woman could!
She was spunky.

The horses were thin, scrawny fellows, so small that Charley himself
stood higher than they. On the other hand, the saddles were
prodigious; they covered the little animals completely, and the large
wooden stirrups nearly grazed the ground. It seemed to Charley that
the saddle alone was weight enough for such horses; but when at word
from his father he cautiously mounted into the seat, his horse appeared
not to mind. With its high horn and cantle, the saddle fitted like a
chair. To fall off would be hard--which was one good thing, at least.

So