t he had a rope attached
to his neck and I was afraid he might become entangled in the fallen
timber and so starve to death.

The tall tramper, who had been definitely abandoned by his partner,
was a sad spectacle. He was blotched by mosquito bites, thin and weak
with hunger, and his clothes hung in tatters. He had just about
reached the limit of his courage, and though we were uncertain of our
horses, and our food was nearly exhausted, we gave him all the rice
we had and some fruit and sent him on his way.

Night came, and still no signs of "Major Grunt." It began to look as
though some one had ridden him away and we should be forced to go on
without him. This losing of a horse is one of the accidents which
make the trail so uncertain. We were exceedingly anxious to get on.
There was an oppressive warmth in the air, and flies and mosquitoes
were the worst we had ever seen. Altogether this was a dark day on
our calendar.

After we had secured ourselves in our tents that night the sound of
the savage insects without was like the roaring of a far-off
hailstorm. The horses rolled in the dirt, snorted, wheeled madly,
stamped, shook their heads, and flung themselves again and again on
the ground, giving every evidence of the most terrible suffering. "If
this is to continue," I said to my partner, "I shall quit, and either
kill all my horses or ship them out of the country. I will not have
them eaten alive in this way."

It was impossible to go outside to attend to them. Nothing could be
done but sit in gloomy silence and listen to the drumming of their
frantic feet on the turf as they battled against their invisible
foes. At last, led by old Ladrone, they started off at a hobbling
gallop up the trail.

"Well, we are in for it now," I remarked, as the footsteps died away.
"They've hit the back trail, and we'll have another day's hard work
to catch 'em and bring 'em back. However, there's no use worrying.
The mosquitoes would eat us alive if we went out now. We might just
as well go to sleep and wait till morning." Sleep was difficult under
the circumstances, but we dozed off at last.

As we took their trail in the cool of the next morning, we found the
horses had taken the back trail till they reached an open hillside,
and had climbed to the very edge of the timber. There they were all
in a bunch, with the exception of "Major Grunt," of whom we had no
trace.

With a mind filled with distressing pictures of the lost