One morning we crossed the Jaci, and on the opposite shore some mules were already geared with Texan saddles, the hombres at their heads, waiting for us. I considered my mule. He was a big, grey, upstanding fellow, with the legs and feet of a racehorse, the head of a hammer, and alert and inquisitive ears. He was very much alive. I had no doubt he could leave anywhere like light, when he had a mind for it. So that I turned to Hill, and said, "Is mine a quiet animal? Is he vicious?" "O say," said my guide, glancing carelessly at my dubious mount, "I guess he's just a mule." When a hombre shouted at my mule he stepped briskly, with more than a hint of the malicious rebel in his gait.
I knew it would happen, and it did. One foot was no sooner buried in a wooden shoe called a stirrup than he was off, like an explosion. A desperate leap got my other leg over my travelling sack, lashed on his rump, and I came down in the saddle, much surprised. Texan saddles are not leather pads for riding domestic creatures, but thrones for ruling devils, and the bit would have broken the mouth of a hippopotamus. The brute stopped, turned back one ear, and his thought was in his swivel eye. "You wait," I saw him say. In the few engrossing moments when his body was expanding and contracting under me I got some idea of the force I was supposed to guide, and it did not make my mind easy, for an office chair had been my most unstable seat till then. Yet off we went quietly, along the track, and Hill was in front, and my mule was as meek as a sheep. There came a swamp, into which he went to the knees, and I dismounted, jumping from hummock to hummock, encouraging him, and showing him the best places. His brown eyes were then like those of a good woman. So leaning forward, when we were through, I patted his sleek neck, and gave him pleasant words. Afterwards, when he showed a certain precious care in difficult places, for the country was very broken, stepping like a tight-rope walker, I was fool enough to think it was because of our understanding. Though I believe he would have deceived anybody.
At noon we left the track and entered the forest by a path so narrow that the trees touched our legs, and sometimes we had just time to duck beneath a noose which a liana dangled in our faces. It was a low and narrow tunnel, and it descended to a bottom where a shallow stream brawled among granite boulders; thence up the trail went through the trees and vines again, and at last we came to a little clearing, where there was a hut, and men who would give us meat and drink. We dismounted. I rubbed my mule's soft nose, and spoke him playfully, as a familiar; but when entering the hut was rebuked by a man there for making a short cut round the heels of my mule. "Never do it. Don't give him a chance. A mule will be peaches for ten years waiting for the sure chance of getting his heels right on your stomach. They're not horses, them mules. They don't bite, and they don't muzzle you and show friendly. They've got no feelings. That chap of yours, his mother was an ass, and his father was old Solfernio himself. But they've all got one good point--they're barren."