There was a little girl beside her, too, not so
brown as she, waving one pretty hand as she held to
the woman's robe with the other. I stopped and
raised my hat, and called a kind farewell, and under
took to say some pretty things, but just that moment
my mule, as mules always will, opened his mouth
and brayed and brayed as if he would die. I jerked
and kicked him into silence, and then began again;
and again the mule began, this time joined by
Limber Jim's. Limber Jim swore in wretched
English, but it was no use the scarlet banner from
the wall was to them the signal of war, and they
refused to be silenced until we mounted and descended to the glorious pines, where I rode and
roved the sweetest years of my life.
Yet still the two hands were lifted from the wall, and the red scarf waved till the tops of the pines came down, and we could see no more.
Then I lifted my hat and said, "Adieu! I reckon I shall never see you any more. Never, unless it may come to pass that the world turns utterly against me. And then, what if I were to return and find not a single living savage?"
I think I was as a man whose senses were in another world. Once I stopped, dismounted, leaned on my little mule, looking earnestly back to the rocky point as if about to return; as if almost determined to return at once and there to remain. There was a battle in my heart. At length awakened, I mounted my mule mechanically, and went on.
