“Yip! yip!” cried Ralph entering fully into the spirit of the chase. As for Topsy, apparently not feeling the weight of the heavy pack at all, she dashed on like a lightning express. Ralph was sorry that the chase was not among the trees, for in the timber Topsy would have found it hard to get along so quickly with the encumbering pack on her back. But up the rocky ledge, which zig-zagged like a trail up the mountain, she fairly flew. The noise of her speeding hoofs was like that of castanets.
“Well, a stern chase is always a long one,” thought Ralph, as he shook a kink out of his rope and spurred after her as fast as his pony was capable of going. The camp was soon left far behind and still the boy found himself on a narrow trail, or shelf of rock, that inclined steeply up the mountain side. Below him the ground dropped off to unknown depths, and on his other hand a wall of rock shot up so steeply that hardly a tree or a bush found footing on it. As they rose higher Ralph experienced a sensation as if he was riding into cloudland. Frequently he would lose sight of Topsy, and then again he could glimpse her as she darted around a shoulder of the mountain, only to be lost to view again.
“Gracious, this is like being slung up between heaven and earth,” thought Ralph, as he loped up the trail as fast as his pony could carry him. Glancing down he saw that a sort of blue mist veiled the depths of the abyss below him. He was many feet above the tops of the tallest of the big pines. Afar off, through the crisp, clear air, he could see more ridges, but he appeared far above them. To anyone gazing at him from below, the boy would have looked no larger than a fly on some steep and lofty wall.
“Fine place to meet anything,” he said to himself. “This road was only built for one.”
At the same instant another thought flashed across him. Up to this time, in the heat of the chase, he had cast reflection to the winds.
The trail was narrowing. Unless it widened further up, how was he to turn his pony around and retrace his steps?
This thought had hardly occurred to him when he was saved further pondering by the sight of Topsy coming flying back along the ledge. Her nostrils were distended in a frightened way and her coat was flecked with foam. For a flash he saw her as she turned a shoulder of rock, and then she vanished again as the trail turned inward toward the cliff face. Ralph had only a second in which to act.